Web 2.0 Services Drive E-mail Client Evolution,

Radicati: Corporate and consumer webmail clients will drive growth in the e-mail client market over the next four years. Web 2.0 techniques such as AJAX and DHTML have opened the door for a new breed of webmail clients that offer desktop-like features and improved performance.

Consumers and corporate users are increasingly using these clients to complement or replace desktop solutions.

The worldwide installed base of e-mail clients will increase from about 1.9 billion seats in 2006, to nearly 3.6 billion seats in 2010. This represents an average annual growth rate of 18%, and an overall increase of 91% between 2006 and 2010.

Microsoft has a comfortable lead in the desktop client market with MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express clients. However, the company is facing increased competition from the free Mozilla Thunderbird desktop client, which has developed a strong following, particularly from within the open source community.

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