Communications and Technology Industry Research

Berg Insight, a research provider for the telecom industry, has released a new study that indicates that WLAN (wireless local area network) will be the next technological wave in the mobile phone market.

 

The study reports that mobile phone operators are looking at WLAN as an opportunity and the count of mobile devices with built-in WLAN functionality is expected to increase from 27 million in 2007 to 400 million in 2012.

 

Mobile device users are expected use WLAN for high-speed Internet access in home or office networks and file transfers (such as photographs and media libraries).

 

“Mobile operators no longer consider WLAN a threat against data revenues,” said André Malm, telecom analyst, Berg Insight. “As flat-rate plans for data access become the norm, encouraging subscribers to use a local Internet connection actually makes much sense as a way to prevent data overload in mobile networks.”

 

The study also provides an estimation of the growth expected in the use of other connectivity technologies such as NFC (Near Field Communication) and UWB (Ultra-Wide Band) in mobile handsets. Both technologies are said to have potential for growth, however their usage is predicted to be limited as compared to WLAN, as they are still to gain mass popularity.

 

Berg forecasts a growth in the number of mobile handsets using NFC or FeliCa from 35 million in 2007 to 215 million in 2012. The forecast for UWB does not indicate any significant growth before 2010. NFC is predicted to achieve a breakthrough by 2010-2011.