Gmail Mobile Gets a Facelift

Some good news is heading your way if you are an individual with multiple Gmail accounts and a smartphone.

Google (News - Alert) recently announced that is has upgraded Gmail for mobile by bringing some long-awaited features to the platform, including the ability to sign in to multiple Gmail accounts at the same time. This feature has been present in the desktop version of Gmail for about a year and has proved particularly convenient for those who need to switch often between one or more personal and business accounts.

“Just like on your desktop, you can now to sign into multiple accounts simultaneously,” Gmail blogger Dominic Leung posted yesterday. “To sign into an additional account, click on the account switcher at the bottom of the threadlist, then click ‘Sign into another account.’ You can quickly switch between accounts by selecting the desired account from the Accounts menu.”

But the Google empire didn’t just stop there with regards to advancements for Gmail for mobile. Instead Google announced a series of other advancements to the offering including mobile-specific signatures, which make it clear to the receiver of a message that the sender is responding to an email via a mobile device.

Moreover, Google introduced vacation auto-responder so that those who forget to set out-of-office auto-replies in Gmail before going on a trip can do so straight from their mobile device. Users can simply choose a start and end date and specify their messages just like on the desktop interface.

Recently, TMCnet reported that Google’s Gmail could pose a serious threat to Microsoft’s (News - Alert) enterprise email business, particularly since Gmail makes up nearly half of the cloud email market.

“While cloud email is still in its infancy, at three to four per cent of the overall enterprise email market, we expect it to be a growth industry, reaching 20 per cent of the market by year-end 2016, and 55 percent by year-end 2020,” said Matthew Cain, research vice president at Gartner (News - Alert), Parnell wrote.

Moreover, media reports indicate that Google’s email service is the only one to really appeal to enterprises in the last few years aside from Microsoft Exchange and other offerings such as Novell (News - Alert) GroupWise and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, are losing momentum.

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