According Jupiter Media Metrix, 16 percent of workers with access to the Internet will be using Instant Messaging (IM) by the end of the year, with that figure expected to reach 46 percent by the year 2005.
While in the US AOL instant messenger (AIM) is the application for workplace messaging, in Australia MSN Messenger dominates all segments of the market.
Jupiter statistics indicate that MSN Messenger controls 51 percent of the instant messenger install base in the workplace. It's followed by ICQ (29 percent), Yahoo (12 percent) and AIM (6 percent).
While Jupiter said that the application is strongly represented among teenage Net users, its appeal for older users will give its grip on the Australian market a unique strength.
"Typically a lot of applications appeal to a specific segment but, according to our data, windows messenger is appealing to two quite different segments," according to a spokesperson from Jupiter. "That suggests that it's going to be appealing across the board."
In the workplace Windows Messenger's widespread adoption is due largely to passive uptake through bundling. More generally it's dominance is due to its partnerships with existing content providers such as NineMSN.
"We're not making any comment on the quality of the applications, this is more about the ability of Microsoft to leverage existing relationships to promote uptake of its messaging applications," the spokesperson added.
