E-mail and cell phones each provide obvious and significant advantages over traditional land-line telephone communication, and this accounts for their extraordinary success. Among other things, e-mail provides the ability to conduct interpersonal communications on an asynchronous basis, and also provides the qualitative advantages of the written, over the spoken, word. And cell phones provide the self-evident advantages of mobile, real-time voice communications.
Individually, the major advantage of each of these two technologies is not shared by the other. The correct combination of the two technologies, however, can provide the major advantages of both. We refer to this combined technology as Mobile Messaging. Formally, we define Mobile Messaging as the ability to send and receive e-mail messages from a mobile, hand-held or hand-carried device. This capability is also sometimes referred to as Wireless Messaging, or Mobile E-mail.
The relationship between Mobile Messaging and conventional e-mail is somewhat similar to that between mobile phones and land-line phones: in each case mobility is being brought to a pre-existing, fixed-location, communications technology.
Mobile Messaging adds another component to a person's array of interpersonal communication options. Along with other enduring communications media such as conventional telephone and e-mail, voice mail, Fax etc., it provides a unique set of advantages to the user.
Usage of Mobile Messaging among end-users is expected to evolve in a similar way to the historical evolution of One-Way Paging. As was the case with One-Way Paging, early usage of Mobile Messaging is expected to be mostly among specialized users, such as emergency service professionals and field service professionals.
Usage is then expected to spread quickly to more general users such as mobile professionals, soccer moms, and so on. Some examples of typical early specialized, and later generalized, users are provide in Table 1.