Mobile Email bigger than SMS? I think not!

A senior director at the independent mobile SEVEN has claimed that mobile email will be bigger than SMS. Isabelle Dumont, Senior Director, Marketing at SEVEN said: "email will be the main messaging application on the phone" she said "as users won't be able to use IM or SMS for all communications. This will result in a lot of consolidation around email in terms of user behaviour going towards email."

I totally disagree with this view.

Seven, who represent a small number of users in the UK mobile market, consist of highly active users and early adopters. Inevitably they are the most likely to use email.

Looking at the UK as a whole, the figure is much lower - less than 30% at the last count. It cerainly has grown in the last few years, but why won't everyone be using email instead of the more costly SMS?

There are two principle reasons:

Not everyone wants mobile email
For a majority of people, their phones are for calls and SMS. With the current range of tariffs and phones anyone who wants email on their phone can pretty much have it by now. There may be a few people where cost is the barrier, but unless mobile internet/email is universally free that will always be the case. The remainder have made a choice NOT to have email. I have heard people give all kinds of reasons: I don't need it, I don't want to be disturbed, the handsets are too small.

SMS is easy and contained
I have email on my phone, yet I still send SMS. The reason for that is simple, SMS is immediate. I look at them straight away because I know they will be short. What's more, all of my SMSs are for me - I have no spam (well very little at least).
Dealing with emails, on the other hand takes up much more time. I have to sift through things from Spam, to newsletters before I get to the ones I want. Many of my emails will take a while to download as they have attachments, and others will take a long time to reply to. So, even though I have an always on email connection, I only check it a few times each day, simply because dealing with emails is time consuming.
SMS is not time consuming in the same way. I can read and send them walking along the road. And if I send one I get a reply very quickly.

I am sure that many users feel as I do, which is why I think that email use will not increase that much. My guess would be around 30-35% of mobile users.