The wider availability of wireless broadband networks,
proliferation of smartphones and other converged devices, in
addition to widening ranges of mobile connectivity solutions, will
result in an almost 60%
growth of mobile business connections according to a new report
by Juniper Research.
Future Mobile Enterprise: Forecasts, Markets & Devices
2009-2014 suggests that the mobiel business connectivity growth
will foster the emergence
of the ‘unwired enterprises’ which will likely yield $247
billion of revenues generated by mobile enterprise service usage,
suggests the research firm. Juniper predicts that by 2014, 722
million business mobile connections will be in use worldwide with
approximately 80% of business mobile devices operating via 3.5/3.9G
networks.
Even though Juniper says that handsets will dominate, accounting
for upwards of 70% of business devices in the latter part of the
period, it adds that in order to increase the effectiveness of
employees in the field,
businesses will likely increasingly make use of embedded and
wireless dongles via laptop PCs and netbooks.
Adding more depth, Juniper sees usage of wireless dongles losing
ground to usage of devices with embedded wireless modems and their
usage will peak in 2010/2011. This should result in the number of
enterprise portable computers with embedded wireless connectivity
to grow by more than 300% between 2008 and 2014. In all, Juniper
expects annual portable computer shipment volumes to exceed 300
million by 2014, accounting for over three quarters of all computer
shipments by the end of that year.
According to Mobile Enterprise report author Andrew Kitson, the
rapid evolution of mobile computing devices is of particular
relevance. He said, “By the end of 2009, portables will account for
around 60% of annual PC sales, suggesting that businesses are
placing less emphasis on desktop machines and investing on combined
laptop-and-phone packages for employees. As 3G networks
proliferate, so it will become more cost effective to replicate the
desktop solution with a wireless device. And with dongles proving
to be easy to lose or damage, so businesses will increasingly turn
to inexpensive notebooks incorporating wireless accesses.”