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Western Europe Wireless Enterprise Forecast

Strategy Analytics released an updated forecast of business mobility revenues in Western Europe, including supporting detail for 18 countries within the region.

They predict that recurring operating expenditures on wireless data solutions in Western Europe will approach $12.7 billion annually by 2010, up from $7.9 billion in 2005. Messaging-centric productivity tools including SMS, Instant Messaging and email will continue to take the lion's share of revenues, holding steady at 90 percent throughout the forecast period.

However, while this dwarfs the remaining 10 percent attributable to wireless line-of-business applications, mobilizing e-business sales and field force applications will remain vitally important IT-sanctioned wireless initiatives in this region.

The UK and Germany (commanding 44 percent of wireless enterprise revenues) are singled out as the most important mobility markets. Sweden will be an especially important test bed for mobile Instant Messaging and other presence-enabled value added services.

Cliff Raskind, Director of the Wireless Enterprise Strategies service states, While business users in the UK and Germany are historically poles apart on SMS adoption, both markets will lead in mobile email and CRM uptake. As the SMS stranglehold on data revenues erodes, these two enterprise-endorsed applications represent prime revenue streams. Either separately or as a potent combination to induce wireless investment, they are of strategically critical importance.

Our research finds that 9 out of every 10 business cellular users in Western Europe uses SMS, nearing 100 percent saturation in the Nordic region. While SMS will remain the largest single component of revenues exceeding $6.4 billion by 2010, it will drop precipitously from 79 percent in 2005 to 50 percent, states Antoine Mathiaud, Sr. Analyst.

At the same time, we believe that both IT-sanctioned and independent use of mobile Instant Messaging will start to supplant a growing portion of both SMS and email use. Today's European teen market entering tomorrow's workforce will find robust implementations of IM on a variety of mobile devices with QWERTY keyboards and always-on connections being much more accessible. Based on available demographics and our extensive survey work, we expect Sweden to lead the charge with IM and presence-enabled services, with an estimated 35 percent of IM users adopting wireless by 2010.

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