Enterprise CMD shipments to top 82M units by 2011

Business users in Western Europe and other regions will help drive surging sales of smartphones and other converged devices over the next few years, according to new figures from IDC.
The market research firm predicted converged mobile devices will see a compound annual growth rate of 54% to surpass 82 million units shipped in 2011. While U.S. sales will remain strong-American users accounted for 42% of such shipments last year-Western Europe will become the second-most important region in the mobile enterprise market, IDC said.
Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific will also see increased adoption of business-friendly handsets, according to the firm, while Japan will remain an “almost entirely consumer-centric” market.
“One of the key drivers for the expected growth in enterprise adoption of CMDs lies in the power to use these devices, beyond basic telephony, to access corporate e-mail, the Internet/intranet, and securely link to corporate databases,” said analyst Sean Ryan. “As CMDs become more tightly coupled with enterprise networks, IT mobility initiatives will trend towards standardization, security, and control-resulting in enterprise procurement of such devices.”