While from a customer perspective this ease of integration simply brings convenience, for operators it presents the opportunity to gain additional voice revenue. The reason for this is that e-mail has a tendency to drive voice traffic. David Ekberg, Ericsson Director for Mobile Data Solutions, explains how. "Users often make a phone call to the sender of a message after reading it," he says. "Because our push e-mail function is integrated into the mobile handset, the customer tends to use the same terminal for both calls and e-mails, and operators therefore don't lose out on voice revenues."

Ericsson recommends operators focus their sales efforts on enterprises of less than 500 people, as it believes this is where the greatest growth potential for mobile-office solutions lies. Ericsson also advises operators to provide the service to enterprises on a subscription basis. Ekberg says this advice is based on Ericsson studies that indicate enterprises prioritize cost control. "Our studies show that the actual cost of a service is not that important to enterprises," he says. "What is important to them is to know in advance the exact amount they are going to pay for a given service."

Since Ericsson launched the product at the Mobile Internet Forum in Zurich last December, more than 50 enterprises and operators have asked for trials. This strong interest is congruent with research by telecom-analysis firm ARC Group, which has reported that mobile-traffic revenues from e-mail and personal information-management will total more then $650 million in 2005, and will increase 13-fold in the next five years.

Read more about Ericsson's mobile-office solutions.