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Businesses To Spend $9 Billion On Mobile Applications By 2011

It's time to dust off the hockey stick because we've got another mobile enterprise market study. According to the latest findings from Compass Intelligence, U.S. businesses will spend $9 billion on mobile CRM and other mobile applications by 2011.

The study claims that U.S. companies will spend roughly $3.8 billion this year on mobile applications including CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning, push e-mail, and other apps:

This market is poised for double-digit annual growth into 2011 and is primarily targeted to improve productivity and collaboration across businesses. Major trends in this industry include growth in productivity-based applications, growth in sophisticated and business-oriented devices, and a major attraction to service providers to strengthen profit margins.

Compass Intelligence recently released a series of market forecasts and reports on mobile applications in the US, all part of a new subscription services called Applications.

Here are some other key findings from the study:

* The Professional Services and Government industries are expected to be the two largest spenders on US mobile applications representing 37 and 22 percent respectively in 2007.

* The Small Business (representing 38 percent) and Enterprise Business (representing 42 percent) segments are expected to be the largest spenders on mobile applications from 2006-2011.

* US annual growth rates in this market range from 20 to 37 percent from 2006 to 2011.

* Major mobile applications include Email, SMS/Text Messaging, CRM, project management, and collaboration and file sharing.

I see two trends of interest in these findings. First, the study predicts that the enterprise will shift its spending from messaging to CRM and other collaboration apps, marking a move away from just tactical mobility to strategic mobility.

The second is the emergence of government as one the leading verticals. Currently verticals like healthcare, retail, field service and transportation are big spenders on mobility. But if this report holds true it looks like the horizontal office might finally kick down for mobility beyond e-mail.

This report paints a much rosier picture of the mobile enterprise market than the report The 451 Group released last week. The 451 Group report's author, Tony Rizzo, doesn't see the market for enhanced mobility applications:

"Is this enough of a marketplace to generate sufficient revenue for the existing mix of vendors? We don't believe so," said Rizzo. "While there is room here for a few third-party vendors, the mobile office market does not look to us to be quite the 600-million-user marketplace that it might seem at first glance."

What do you think? Does your company plan to spend more on mobility in the next year? And if so do you plan to deploy mobile CRM and other enhanced applications?

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