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A recent study by The Radicati Group (News - Alert) on instant messaging market reveals there are over 2.5 billion instant messaging (IM) accounts worldwide in 2011. The number is expected to touch 3.3 billion by 2015.

The research "Instant Messaging Market, 2011-2015" offers an in-depth analysis of the Instant Messaging market. IM services are gaining popularity because they provide real-time communication and presence indicators between two or more people on a network.

The latest trend indicates instant messaging is blurring the line with Unified Communications (News - Alert) by adding voice and video chat capabilities, as well as mobile device access and integration with social networks.

Through this study, Radicati Group analyzes four segments in the market: Public IM Networks, Enterprise IM, IM Management and Security, and IM Aggregators. The research gives detailed installed base and revenue market share by vendor, four-year forecasts, breakouts by region and business size, and an in-depth analysis of business use of Public IM.

Companies analyzed in this research include Actiance, AOL (News - Alert), Bloomberg, Cisco, eBuddy, Facebook, Fring, Global Relay, Google, IBM, Meebo, Microsoft, Novell, Skype, Symantec, Tencent, Thomson Reuters, Yahoo!, and others.

In a major development from the instant messaging industry, recently Symantec (News - Alert) Corp announced the launch of Instant Messaging Security. cloud (IMS.cloud) with support for Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync to become one of the first SaaS vendors to support Microsoft Lync users.