Mobile unified communications looks to have a healthy future, at least if the current projections from one research group hold true.

The mobile UC market is expected to grow from $5.15 billion in 2014 to $17.38 billion by 2019, according to MarketsAndMarkets, with a predicted compound annual growth rate of around 27.5 percent.

There are two trends that should drive mobile UC growth.

First, growth of the cloud will drive mobile UC adoption. As businesses move their UC infrastructure to the cloud, this natural paves the way for enabling employees to use UC while on the road.

Second, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies are spurring mobile UC growth. Most businesses now allow their employees to work from their own mobile devices, and this has pushed the need to also enable them to access their firm’s UC solution from these devices.

Traveling, telecommuting and remotely located employees in particular are requesting better tools to connect and collaborate at work, and UC vendors are responding with mobile apps that meet these needs.

But there are challenges for the mobile UC market, too. The biggie is the user experience.

Frankly, many mobile UC offerings are just not as good as their desktop-based counterparts. This makes mobile UC a less than desirable experience, and slows adoption of mobile UC.

Having so many good consumer UC options available for mobile also hurts the market, because employees are used to good mobile UC at home.

Gartner noted in its 2014 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications (News - Alert) as a Service that people are less than enthusiastic about the user experience of most mobile UC offerings.

So while the future looks bright for mobile UC, there’s still work to be done. There are some exceptions, of course, but mobile UC vendors overall need to step up the user experience to deliver on the promise that mobile UC represents.