Report: Mobile Enterprise Market Will Grow 23% Annually To $3.5 Billion In 2010Report: Mobile Enterprise Market Will Grow 23% Annually To $3.5 Billion In 2010

Fueled by the explosive growth of cellular networks and handheld devices, the worldwide mobile enterprise application market will boom at double-digit rates, reaching $3.5 billion in 2010, according to a market study released Thursday.

IDC said the mobile enterprise application market, about $1.2 billion this year, is expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 23% until 2010.

"The worldwide growth of cellular networks, the proliferation of handheld devices, and a general level of connection in individuals' personal lives are quickly finding their way into the enterprise," said Mary Wardley, VP of IDC's CRM applications research, in a statement.

"The current trend in enterprise applications is to mobilize the application by giving employees access to salient portions of the application's content while working in an always available mode with various levels of connectivity," she said.

IDC predicted that the mobile enterprise application market's growth will be driven by a variety of factors, including the introduction by vendors of packaged products aimed at end-user organizations and horizontal deployments across organizations of CRM apps.