Mobile working takes off in western Europe

Western European companies are rushing to implement mobile working technology, with the telecoms, media, transport and utilities sectors leading the charge, according to new research.

Analyst IDC found that the most common mobile projects are mobile office applications (currently used by 34 per cent of media and 33 per cent of the telecoms companies who participated in the survey) and mobile salesforce automation (33 per cent of media and 29 per cent of telcos in the sample).

Transport and utilities are expected to invest in mobile projects this year.

The research also predicted that major mobile technology growth areas in 2004 for all four verticals will be XML applications and mobile salesforce automation.

For transport only, adoption is expected to increase in mobile customer support and mobile office products, while utility companies are also looking at implementing hot-desking initiatives.

The survey results suggest that only a few device types are commonly employed by enterprises in transport, telecoms, media and utilities for mobile access to corporate information and IT systems. The laptop PC and mobile phone were by far the most widely used mobile devices among the companies in the survey sample.

Although most respondent companies indicated that they plan to buy in mobile systems from external providers, in-house custom development still plays a part in the four verticals, particularly in utilities.