Smartphone take up disappoints

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A greater than ever choice of email-capable mobile devices, as well as services and tariffs, should have led to growing take up among business users. But, according to figures from handset maker Nokia, just two per cent of business email users access their mail from a mobile phone or wireless PDA.

Nokia had predicted that by now, businesses would have moved from an opportunistic approach to mobile working - largely driven by small projects or employees setting up their own mobile devices - to what the company terms "strategic mobility". Here, IT departments have a central role in selecting and deploying both services and devices.

Instead, the much of the growth of smart phone use, as well as of applications such as mobile email, is being driven largely by the consumerisation of the technology, and employees bringing personal devices into the workplace and using them to access business data as well as for their own purposes.

"It's fair to say that the enterprise mobility market or the business mobility market is still pretty much in its infancy and has still to achieve the potential that we know is out there," says Mary McDowell, executive vice president at Nokia's enterprise division. "But unlike other IT investments this is user driven. Users don't care what networking gear or storage systems a company uses, but they care a lot about their mobility systems."

Nokia estimates that, of the 700 million business email boxes in use worldwide, just 1.7 per cent are connected to a mobile device. Independent figures from analysts support this: IDC calculates that there are 12 million smartphone users worldwide who connect to a business email device.

But it is not the availability of the technology, or the need, that is the barrier. IDC's figures show that in addition to the 12 million smartphone users who do access email from their handset, there are a further 37 million business smartphone users who only use their phones for calls and text messaging. An even greater number of workers have no device at all: IDC estimates the total number of mobile workers at 373 million.

Such figures could well underestimate the total number of users for mobile business applications.

According to Orange, the mobile operator, some 1.5 million UK employees use mobile email across all the different platforms, including BlackBerry, Microsoft, and operator-branded services. But the number of mobile email users is still less than one tenth of those using fixed email accounts for their work.

There is little doubt, though, that the market has potential for significant further growth: even simply connecting all smartphone users to their companies' email infrastructure would triple the number of mobile mailboxes. Then there is the potential for small businesses and "prosumers" to access mail on the move.

"It is in this market, where consumers, prosumers and small businesses wish ease of access to their ISP (internet service provider) account whilst mobile, that major growth can be expected," says Michael Reilly, head of data products at Orange UK.

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