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Mobile and wireless technologies have the capability to radically
reform organisational efficiency and improve customer service.

The emergence of mobile web-service technologies, mobile portals and information-aggregation middleware will serve to link sub-sectors of particular vertical markets, for example integrated component supply, automotive assembly, forecourt sales, after-sales, service & repair and roadside-assistance.

Approach is fundamentally flawed - suppliers must decide whether to remain specialist sector supplier or transform

The emergence of volume market opportunities will require many
suppliers to decide whether they wish to remain a specialist sector supplier or transform into a solution provider and/or generic volume application supplier.

"Most large vendors are approaching the mobility sell in a
fundamentally flawed way, targeting existing sub-vertical segments in isolation for reasons of protectionism. Whilst it is unsurprising that defensive strategies abound at a time when revenues remain hard to come by, this fundamentally misses the point about the future of enterprise mobility," says Nick Greenway, mobility analyst at Datamonitor.

"Rather than wasting money on trying to develop end-to-end offerings, a far greater focus must come on partnering with smaller and innovative mobile niche players. This will allow vendors to target the range of sub-sectors within a vertical."

According to Datamonitor, most existing mobile middleware vendors will survive, as such partnerships leverage their competence in the medium term, and the mass-market sustains them in the longer term, where declining average deal-size causes engagements to fall off larger vendors' radar.

Demand for front office applications will rise

Over the last decade, the bulk of enterprise spend on mobile solution applications has been in bespoke vertical applications.

However, despite the current rise in packaged vertical applications, these will still take an increasingly back seat to front office applications between now and 2006.

Datamonitor maintains front office applications will account for the largest share of investments rising from $145 million in 2002 to an estimated $970 million in Europe by 2006.

Enabling software vendors set to gain the bulk of revenues
Vendors of devices and enabling software currently take the lion's share of business accounting for over 50% of total solution value between them, followed by vendors of hardware and components (19%), then systems integrators (15%).

Whilst spend on other constituent parts, most notably devices and management will have dropped in 2006, vendors of enabling software will still account for around 25% of the mobile solutions market.

Healthcare sector to show the fastest growth rate in terms of
investment

Although the usual suspects i.e. financial services,
telecommunications and utilities and manufacturing industries, will continue to spend the most on mobile enterprise solutions, investment by the healthcare sector will have the fastest growth rate, 93% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2001 - 2006.

While larger incumbent independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems houses such as Siebel and Oracle are only really bringing considered mobile propositions to market now - far later than start-up competitors - they will win out, due to the 'usual suspect' verticals accounting for the largest markets. (Financial services, utilities and manufacturing).