The world's mobile worker population will hit the 1 billion mark this year and grow to nearly 1.2 billion people – 'more than a third of the world's workforce' – by 2013, according to a new forecast from IDC (News - Alert).

 

The study, 'Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast,' found the most significant gains will be in the emerging economies of Asia/Pacific, where 'a strong economic recovery and new interest in unified communications will drive healthy growth in all aspects of mobility spending.'

 

In fact, 'vast opportunities exist for bringing a variety of mobile technologies to the world's workforce,' Sean Ryan, research analyst, Mobile Enterprise Software, said. 'Outside the United States and Japan, where mobile worker population penetration has essentially peaked, there are large worker populations that are still growing.'

 

And that means great things for companies looking to increase efficiency and productivity with such Web meeting technology, among other things.

 

While 'some barriers to adoption will still have to be overcome, the potential market for mobility solutions is enormous,' Ryan said.

 

The findings showed that the United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 72.2 percent of the workforce mobile in 2008, and will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 75.5 percent of the workforce, or 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013.

 

Naturally, smartphone numbers will explode, too, making mobile a market companies such as Bradon Technologies see great potential for.

 

Bradon officials recently said they have a way to take VoIP enabled PC and smart phone collaboration apps to the next level with its proprietary Frame Independent codec - Bradon Technologies Audio Codec, or BTAC. The technology supports an unlimited amount of users without impacting quality, company officials said, adding that the technology offers low bandwidth and CPU load times – 'critical components for mobile device applications,' especially Web meetings.

 

“BTAC solves the VoIP data delivery problem with its proprietary blend of codec components that maximize efficiencies in the areas of data loss, compression, bandwidth, multi-user synchronization, CPU usage, and UDP (News - Alert) overhead,” company officials said.

 

 

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) represents the largest total number of mobile workers throughout the forecast, with 546.4 million mobile workers in 2008 growing to 734.5 million or 37.4 percent of the total workforce in 2013.

 

Japan's mobile worker population will total 49.3 million in 2013, representing 74.5 percent of its total workforce. Like the United States, this is essentially the sustainable limit of Japan's mobile worker penetration.

 

Western Europe's mobile workforce will reach 129.5 million mobile workers, or 50.3 percent of the workforce, in 2013, the report found.