IDC Research claim that Australians "love their mobile phones more than ever" especially in the SMB sector. They also report that up to 80% of SMBs in Australia are providing mobile connections to employees or reimbursing work-related mobile expenses reinforcing that mobile technologies are strongly entrenched in Australia's working culture.
The report titled, Australia Small and Medium-Sized Business Wireless and Mobility Technology Adoption, 2008: The Need for Speed, revealed that this trend is stimulated by the increasing usage of mobile data. The report also showed the widespread availability of mobile broadband over 3G/HSDPA means that using business applications on a mobile enabled laptop at an affordable cost has become possible for a large number of SMBs.
"Hardware vendors are starting to offer well priced 3G/HSDPA enabled notebooks and competition between providers is driving mobile data cost down. Software vendors are still largely missing in the picture but are starting to offer mobile business applications optimised for high-speed mobile networks as they realise the huge potential of the mobility market" says Jean-Marc Annonier, Research Manager for Small and Medium Business Markets at IDC.
