Now that consumers can use smartphones for multiple purposes, telecom managers can drive themselves crazy trying to separate off-the-clock charges with real business usage.

 

The good news is that there are telecom expense management providers that can address this issue. One of them, Amtel (News - Alert), recently announced that its award-winning TIMS mobile expense management software platform provides segregation of mobile apps downloaded for smartphones in a corporate environment.

 

That means companies can automatically send the “charges split report” for non-approved download charges to the end users and the corporate accounting.

 

“With the popularity of mobile apps it is putting an extra burden on the corporate mobile billing,” said Pankaj Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Amtel. “Companies are struggling to find ways to implement mobile policy and segregate the individual apps spending from the allowable corporate usage policy.”

 

The Apple (News - Alert) iPhone, RIM BlackBerry, Motorola DROID and similar smartphones offer a variety of paid applications, Gupta noted. These applications can be downloaded from carrier’s online store by end users on the company supplied smart phones for $.99 to $9.99 per download.

 

Separating work-related charges from fun phone splurges is just the beginning, as Amtel’s TIMS cell phone expense management software platform includes other tools to make tracking mobile phone expenses at an organization much easier.

 

According to data from the firm Pyramid Research, smartphones will constitute about 60 percent of new handsets sold in the United States by 2014, TMCnet reported.

 

In a recent report – “Why BlackBerry (News - Alert) Will Be No. 1 by 2014” – Pyramid found that smartphones will account for 31 percent of new handsets sold in the United States in 2009. Two years ago, the figure stood at 15 percent – which means sales of smartphones have almost doubled in 2009. 

 

Dan Locke, senior analyst at Pyramid, said that BlackBerry holds nearly 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. However, when smartphones’ share of new handsets sales double in 2014, Pyramid expects that Apple’s exclusive relationship with AT&T (News - Alert) will have ceased. This could effectively make the iPhone available to an additional 200 million U.S. wireless customers.