Carriers have traditionally viewed unified messaging (UM) services as voice-messaging services, but are progressively looking to offer UM as a central repository for MMS, SMS, voice mail, e-mail and video traffic.

Gartner believes that the need to integrate communications options with Personal Information Manager (PIM) functionality is especially important in mobile applications, because it simplifies challenges of navigating between screens and functions.

According to Stephanie Pittet, principal research analysts at Gartner, due to the plethora of services under evaluation, we should not expect one single winner to emerge, but rather a mixture of several applications.

She says: 'The most important issue for carriers to solve is the convergence of the various wireless messaging services onto a single carrier platform with an integrated user-interface that provides ready access to all messaging applications.'