High-speed access and new business apps demonstrated at mobile technology show

ComputerWeekly reports that technologies and applications for business will get a big push at 3GSM. Nick McQuire at Yankee Group, said, "We will see more application development in customer relationship management and field services for mobilising fleet and sales staff."

McQuire thought "the next wave in wireless applications would be business-specific applications and enterprise resource planning applications to unlock corporate data and push it out to the field."

One of the technology drivers will be 3.5G networks based on HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) with a number of manufacturings showing prototype handsets at the event. Mike Welch at Canalys noted "HSDPA cards for notebooks could be a major breakthrough for businesses."

He said, "This gives you speed for the first time equivalent to mobile broadband. The question is what are you paying for the connection? If you are doing it over 3G, you will still be paying for the data usage. For a business it is the unpredictability of it - your bill might change month to month and you cannot control it."