According to eMarketer in March 2010 there are now 650 million people Worldwide  who are now using their smartphones more and more for tasks such as email and social networking. This number is set to rocket owing to the penetration of affordable smartphones within the market. Research from Comscore in December 2009 supports this prediction – it found that 70 per cent of smartphone users have accessed email and 43 per cent have accessed social networks via their devices.

What is interesting is that email usage is up owing to the social network usage on these devices. Research from ExactTarget has also discovered that social media and social networking have helped increase the use of email. The reason for this increase is that users of smartphones still want to keep in touch with their social network when 'untethered' and social networking sites use email and messaging to encourage these users to return.

It is important that we understand how these new technologies are affecting our customers, whilst at the same time understanding how they can be used to open up communication channels with them. This is very likely to help us build stronger customer relationships and loyalty in the future.