How to be a 3G whizz

The future for 3G looks bright, but the market needs educating

Hands up if you've got a 3G mobile phone. Anyone? While I'm sure there are some early adopters out there, the majority are still pondering what the business take-up will be.

A recent report from IDC claimed that over 70 per cent of firms have little knowledge of the advantages of 3G. The analyst said that, although operators are integrating 3G into their mobile services, the market desperately needs educating.

Businesses are unaware of the advantages of increased bandwidth in productivity gains, data downloads and connections to business-critical applications via a handset.

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile provider, revealed its 3G phone services at the beginning of the month, and it is already heralding the launch a success.

Three weeks to declare any technology a success may seem quick, but because this one has been bandied around for the past few years, the market was raring to get hold of it. IDC has already predicted that shipments of 3G mobile phones will surpass 48 million units this year, 140 per cent higher than last year.

Rival 3, owned by Hutchison, has been offering 3G services for mobile phones, and O2, Orange and T-Mobile are all expected to unveil 3G phones in time for the Christmas rush.

But businesses don't rush to buy technology at Christmas; consumers do. The mobile operators, while aiming their technology at the business markets, are banking on consumers to drive demand, while businesses get educated.

It is a similar situation to SMS. Before texting really took off, operators tried to tout the business benefits of using text to discreetly contact people in meetings, share information with a group of people quickly and make smaller demands on battery life.

But it was consumers, particularly teenagers, that really drove the SMS market, and it is only now that businesses are using text as a real marketing and CRM tool.

While mobile industry leaders are busy emphasising and hyping up a bright future for 3G mobile, vendors and operators must understand that support is still needed to promote the development of carefully targeted new services.