The push email market may have plenty of room for growth, but competition is expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

This situation raises the question of whether the leader Research in Motion (RIM), with its BlackBerry offering, will be able to maintain its position or whether it is destined simply to become an also ran or acquisition target (the sector continues to mature).

The market, he believes, has to date been held back because “it is still too hard to set these things up and smartphones that use push are still too large and difficult to use for most”.

While the BlackBerry “remains one of the most attractive devices in the segment” and is “comparatively easy to use”, the advantage of going with a Microsoft Mobile 6 and Exchange 2007 combination, for example, is that there is no need to set up a separate back-end push email server, “although the settings on the phone can be daunting”.

Using RIM, on the other hand, does require the installation of a separate BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which means that there is “yet one more device to set up and administer, though the phone is still harder to set up than it should be”.

But the big test for RIM over the next two years or so will be the rising levels of competition in a market that it has more or less owned since the BlackBerry was first launched in 1999. Beyond the most dangerous of rivals in the shape of Microsoft, device manufacturers such as Motorola and Palm also have RIM solidly in their sights, as do mobile network operators such as Vodafone.

The mobile operator has, for example, just launched the Vodafone Application Service in conjunction with mobile workforce management and field service software supplier Dexterra to try and gain a larger share of the enterprise market for mobile applications access, another sector that RIM is pursuing.

As a result, although RIM is still currently the dominant player, with the biggest market share of the push email space, “whether it can hold this in the face of Microsoft is another matter. It poses a big threat.” This is not least because, while RIM may have a better understanding of the mobile environment at the moment, “Microsoft is getting there”