Hosted mailboxes are gaining wider representation in the mix of total mailboxes in the Asia Pacific, though its share was only 6 to 9 percent in 2010. Its lower cost of ownership, ability to improve employees’ mobility, and multiple devices accessibility are helping it steadily build on the foothold it gained in the market.

Significantly, hosted email's shift to cloud computing – both public and private cloud – has reduced its overall costs and enhanced its capability of disaster recovery and data protection.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of Asia Pacific Hosted Email Market, finds that the market earned revenues of US$101.4 million in 2010 and estimates this to reach US$234.7 million in 2017.

"Enterprise hosted email service providers need to move their offerings into the cloud space and integrate them with other hosted/cloud unified communications (UC) components," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst Jessie Yu.

"It also offers the advantages of greater efficiency, larger mailbox space, and not needing expensive software email license. Enterprises are expected to turn to hosted emailing for its lower subscription charge with almost no requirement for operation or IT support."

While the larger enterprises tend to gravitate toward the hybrid model of on-premise software and hosted services, most small office home office (SOHO) and small enterprises prefer the free webmail or the subscription model. Global service providers that wish to gain local presence have to battle cultural and user preference for Asians as well as market regulations in emerging markets such as China, India, and the ASEAN.

The impending price erosion will also pressure vendors as the market moves toward maturity. Hosted email has not yet become a huge success in the business environment because customers desire data security, service reliability, scalability, control, and disaster recovery. The confidentiality of information and documents ranks high among enterprises. However, public cloud and open-source platforms do not always offer advanced data security.

Besides, escalating competition from free webmail will also eat into the market shares of the hosted email market. "Moving forward, private cloud is expected to drive the adoption of webmail among the entire workforce," noted Yu. "Most key vendors are focusing on providing comprehensive solutions on mobile and tablet devices to beat back competition and make the most of the popularity of cloud computing."