Global e-mail accounts are set to increase from 3.1 billion accounts in 2011 to about 4.1 billion by year-end 2015, according to a newly released study from the Radicati Group.

The report also indicated that a great deal of corporate and consumer communication is also shifting to other forms of communications, specifically instant messaging (IM) and social networks.

Headquartered in Palo Alto (News - Alert), Calif., The Radicati Group brings together key data and statistics on the use of e-mail, IM, social networking, wireless e-mail, and unified communications (UC).

The group works with businesses to aid the selection of the right products and technologies to support their business needs.

Its latest report included data on the following areas: business and consumer e-mail accounts, user demographics, on-premises and hosted Exchange e-mail, geographic distribution of user accounts, e-mail accounts by business size and vertical industry, daily e-mail traffic per user, email storage requirements, and volume and cost of spam and malware.

The report also includes data on the amount of time corporate and consumer users spend daily on e-mail, instant messaging and social networking.

Earlier this month, the group launched Enterprise Social Networking – Market Quadrant 2011, which provides a competitive view of key players in the Enterprise Social Networking market.

This report analyzed the following providers: Atlassian, IBM, Jive Software, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle (News - Alert), SocialText, and Telligent.