Mobile email, including access to calendars and contact information, will drive growth in mobile data services for businesses over the next five years, industry analysts have predicted.

According to research firm Analysys, around 40 per cent of people with a business mobile phone (21 million Europeans) will use mobile email by 2008, compared to less than one per cent today.

Over the same period, the annual mobile services revenue generated by email will increase from €49m in 2003 to €2.9bn in 2008.

"Businesses have been slow to start using mobile networks for services other than voice," said Katrina Bond, lead author of the report.

"But mobile email is set to lead the way as solutions to enable this valuable extension to existing person-to-person communications becomes more widespread."

The report, Mobile Data Solutions for Businesses: Maximising Take-Up and Revenue, examines currently available mobile email access offerings including Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003, Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices and the NokiaOne hosted service.

Mobile access to company intranets, and to specialist applications such as sales-force automation, are also identified by the report as key areas for growth.

"Increasing revenue will come from general web access over mobile networks," explained Bond. "However, mobile web access alone will not be enough to convince businesses to start using mobile data services."

Analysys expects western European businesses to be spending €8.1bn across all mobile data services by 2008, up from €1.8bn in 2003. Small and medium-sized businesses will account for 78 per cent of that spend.