BlackBerry is the saviour of wireless email

The mobile messaging device Blackberry is driving an increase in demand for mobile email, a Gartner analyst said.

According to Gartner, 80 per cent of workers will use wireless email by 2008.

Monica Basso, analyst for Gartner, said: "Wireless email adoption is growing very rapidly and Blackberry is a symptom of this. It's being driven by Blackberry, it's coming to Europe and it's growing in all regions."

Basso was speaking at Gartner's IT security conference in London. She said that more than 50 per cent of transactions are unstructured email. By 2006, she said, 10 per cent of that email will be wireless.

"In 2010 perhaps we will not distinguish wireless email from SMS and push-to-talk," said Basso. "There will be converged messaging. The user will not know the difference between message mediums - they will just think of the recipient, send the message and it will go by itself, by whatever medium."

Basso added that deploying wireless email involves risk, but that should not deter firms: "There are threats - they are easily stolen, and people can easily commit fraud on these devices, but that should not put people off."

Dan Ilett writes for ZDNet UK