Critical Path sponsored an interesting survey that says that U.S. mobile phone users want to receive email from family members on their handsets provided the service is inexpensive and easy to use. According to the survey, 69 percent of respondents considered emails from a spouse or significant other to be the largest priority.

The reason Critical Path sponsored the survey is that they offer a service called Memova Mobile, a service that mobile phone operators can resell that delivers email to mobile handsets. The results of this survey should be interpreted with that in mind.

This survey interested me because Kathleen and I definitely use email on our Treo 650s to communicate with each other during the business day. We pay a premium for service at this point ($40 per person per month for unlimited wireless data from Cingular), but we made made the decision to spend the money on mobile communications and economize on telephone service at home by using VoIP instead of POTS. [ via TreoCentral ]