Launch of iPhone 6 shows data hunger won't abate

Duncan Higgins says mobile phones are the main means of communication in many small businesses

Our online survey of 1,013 SMB decision makers, conducted by ComRes between 29 August and 3 September, suggests that one in eight SMBs use mobiles as their primary channel for business communication.

So the new iPhone 6 may represent a portion of the livelihood and growth of thousands of start-ups, entrepreneurs and other companies across the UK.

It is easy to get sidetracked by exciting new consumer features, but we should not forget that for a sizeable proportion of companies, these phones are likely to be a shop window, checkout, account ledger, in-tray, meeting room, stock inventory and networking tool in one.

The faster the processing power, the more they can get done, and the better for our national bottom line.

And it's not just small businesses that need the small screen to survive. So much of our work with large enterprises is around mobilising their operations – ensuring they can access data securely and collaborate from anywhere in the world.

So these new handsets will allow staff to work more flexibly, and businesses to be more agile – providing entirely new ways for companies to operate.

The challenge is how to ensure those millions of mobile phones, with their increasingly powerful capabilities, can stay connected wherever they happen to be – something we believe can be addressed through innovations such as small-cell technology to boost bandwidth in high-traffic locations, and free public WiFi in UK cities.

Appetite for data shows no sign of abating, so the race is on. The future of our economy depends on it.

Duncan Higgins is marketing director at Virgin Media Business