June/July 2007

Enterprise users of smart mobile phones are likely to be drawn to phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system in future, rather than rivals such as Symbian and BlackBerry, according to a report entitled Enterprise Mobile Strategies from analyst BRC Consultancy.

Although Windows Mobile currently has only a minority share of the smartphone market, BRC believes that a critical factor in the choice of OS will be the number of tools available for extending corporate applications to mobiles. It points out that comprehensive packages are already available for using Windows Mobile to access Lotus, various SAP offerings, Oracle CRM and of course Microsoft Office.

'Conversely,' the report adds, 'the proprietary nature of BlackBerry's operating system will inhibit third-party developers, as will Symbian's software development kits (which are device-dependent), fragmenting application markets.'

According to Jeff Ace, one of the report's authors: 'RIM and Symbian have attracted millions of business users through personal information manager and email software, but without middleware solutions they will lose them to Microsoft.'