Lars Vestergaard, research director with IDC, in a presentation to a Mobility Conference in Dublin, said that the recent acquisition of O2 by Spanish giant Telefonica, could force a shake up in the market.
The mobile providers came in for particular criticism from Vestergaard for their pricing in relation to mobile services. Survey results showing that across Europe, organisations were willing to pay no additional cost over current mobile services for 3G. Telefonica, according to Vestergaard, has a good track record in bringing cost effective 3G services to market in Europe and the hope is that this experience will allow an improvement in the 3G offerings here, but also a price reduction from the competition. Based on the European experience, this should bring true mobile data access within reach of smaller companies.
For the small to mediumsized enterprise, the benefits would allow greater flexibility to the workforce, but also greater advantages for support and sales people in the field. As the work-life balance increasingly becomes an issue, the availability of such services could provide companies with the ability to offer more flexible work practices to attract and retain employees. Where as enterprise currently enjoy the benefits of mobile data access despite the costs, Vestergaard expressed the view that greater competition on availability and price for mobile data access is likely within the foreseeable future, which would bring those services within reach for smaller organisations.
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