According to META Group, 50% of enterprises will
have wireless e-mail in place within two or three years, which will spark a run
on wireless application projects. However, most projects will concentrate on
some form of targeted field-force automation (e.g., route delivery, service,
field sales, and asset management) that is an extension of an existing
environment, rather than general-purpose mobile infrastructure.
"Despite the challenges of
less-than-universal wide-area wireless coverage, we have seen a renewed interest
in deploying wireless applications during the past six months, as companies are
beginning to spend again," said Jack Gold, wireless industry analyst at
META Group.
"The downside is that this is putting
increased pressure on already burdened IT organizations to support users on
various devices such as notebooks, tablet PCs, PDAs, and smart phones," he
added.
To ease the influx of predicted wireless
application projects, enterprises are considering platform vendors such as IBM,
SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft to expedite the processes. However, Gold advises
enterprises to implement these projects with an overall view of strategic
architecture and enterprise security to maximize return on investment.
Home Networking Hits it Big
Home networking entered the mainstream in 2003 and early 2004, as large
numbers of broadband users installed home networks to share Internet connections
and electronics vendors delivered new products to send high-value entertainment
content over the network. According to In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com), the
continued need for broadband sharing and a growing interest in entertainment
networking will drive the total value of equipment with a home networking
connection of some type from $8.3 billion in 2004 to $17.1 billion by 2008.
"The emergence of media networking continues
to be the most exciting part of the home networking market," according to
Mike Wolf, Principal Consumer Connectivity and Content Analyst with In-Stat/MDR.
"Many vendors have announced or released media networking products to
connect entertainment devices to networks in order to share audio and video
content around the home. We expect Microsoft's Media Center Extender technology
to accelerate this trend going forward into 2005."
In-Stat/MDR has also found that Asia will eclipse
North America for the region with the most home networks by 2008, rising from
27% of all home networks worldwide in 2004 to 36% in 2008, with North America
dropping from 46% to 34% in the same time span.
Hard Drive Possibility for Smartphones
Tiny hard disc drives will allow high-end "smartphones" to reach
their full potential by allowing massive local storage for enterprise
applications, according to research published by IDC.
But the phones using these hard discs will not be
for everyone, as they are likely to be slower, heavier, easier to break and more
power-hungry than their counterparts with flash memory.
Figures from IDC and Gartner also showed that
sales of traditional handheld computers are levelling off, while smartphone
sales are booming.
IDC said that demand for storage on phones will
be driven by increasing network bandwidth with the rollout of 3G systems. Hard
discs will make mobile phones more useful for music, imaging and reference
applications.