Lately, there’s been a lot of emphasis on the growing interest in smartphones among consumers. Still, its business customers who are offering between 20 and 80 percent greater ARPUs than the average mobile consumer in emerging markets, according to ABI Research’s (News - Alert) latest Business Mobility Research Service report.

 

And as mobile unified communications grows, mobile business customer revenues are projected to increase over the next five years from one to four percentage points more than the overall mobile services market. But it’s the mobile customers who are self-employed or work in businesses with fewer than 100 employees who account for about 72 percent of all mobile business customers that will spur this growth.

 

This presents great opportunities for mobile operators, said ABI Research practice director Dan Shey (News - Alert).

 

“Smaller businesses in emerging markets still have relatively simple computing and connectivity needs; but these will evolve and become more sophisticated as the regions’ economies grow,” Shey said. “Operators in the emerging markets have the opportunity to become the primary solution providers of telecommunications and data services for a vast majority of companies in these regions.”

 

According to the report, data services for emerging market mobile business customers will command an even greater portion of revenues than those in developed region markets, growing to as high as 59 percent of total mobile services revenues by 2014. Additionally, mobile broadband services connecting computing devices such as laptops will, in most emerging market regions, provide more revenue than messaging services by 2014. 

 

As part of ABI Research’s Business Mobility Research Service data is provided for five emerging markets, all updated on a quarterly basis.