The business mobile e-mail and messaging market is large, about 4 to 5 million users in the United States alone, reports In-Stat. The research firm says there is a huge potential market of 20 to 30 million mobile workers in the United States, and many millions more around the world.

The market can still expand greatly and, in the long run, higher bandwidth will lead to a wider breadth of services that will generate additional revenue.

"For now, mobile workers value mobile data services in general, but don't see much value in specific, richer services such as application access," said Allyn Hall, In-Stat analyst. "Subscribers need better handsets and greater network bandwidth to take advantage of the full range of mobile data services. The sooner 3G or faster networks are in place and mobile workers acquire handsets with more powerful processors, more memory, better screens, and keyboards, the sooner explosive market growth can occur."

A recent report by In-Stat found that RIM remains the leader in the mobile messaging and data market, but other players have arrived.

Respondents to an In-Stat survey of mobile professionals don't use mobile data for much more than e-mail and simple text messaging, and they typically connect via wireless PC modems rather than handsets. The document concludes that the next "killer app" after mobile e-mail will be sales force automation, followed by field force automation.

The report "Wireless Email and Messaging for Business: Poised but Waiting" covers the various categories of mobile e-mail messaging systems and outlines how to define the appropriate balance of the cost-control-complexity-convenience tradeoffs when selecting among the many solutions available. It also examines the products, competitive positions, and market insights of four companies that provide innovative mobile messaging solutions today. Finally, it presents results from a proprietary survey of mobile professionals.