In spite of the fact that North American mobile business customer base contracted 2.9 percent in 2009, the business customer ARPUs grew by 2.5 percent, said ABI Research in an analysis.

 

ABI Research (News - Alert) provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of emerging trends in global connectivity.

 

According to ABI Research’s North American Business Mobility Vertical Market Analysis, this contraction was due to the doubling of unemployment that shifted mobile business customers to the consumer category.

 

“The bad economy accelerated greater use of mobile services by business customers, particularly use of mobile data services,” said Dan Shey (News - Alert), practice director, in a statement.

Shey said that mobile services increase productivity across all occupations, with field force workers finding the greatest benefit. “Assuming the recovery continues, mobile will see even bigger gains in 2010 for both subscribers and ARPUs.”

 

According to ABI Research, the manufacturing vertical has been hit the hardest, showing greater loss of mobile business customers than all other sectors in 2009.

 

Mobile business customer numbers in the healthcare field stayed flat as this sector added jobs.

 

Over the forecast period, ABI Research noted that ARPU growth will be greatest in real estate, and in professional, scientific and technical services, two industries with occupational distributions that are increasing use of mobile services, particularly data services.

 

The analysis provides a detailed view of all the mobile applications and services that serve mobile business customers’ everyday work needs.

 

Business market segmentation is provided at two levels. In the first-level, five-year mobile services forecasts are provided for the United States public/private sector, United States self-employed, and for Canada.

 

In the second level, United States Public/Private sector data is segmented for 20 different occupations, 22 industry verticals and 4 sizes of business.

 

Mobile services forecasts are provided for voice (real-time communications), messaging, information access, application downloads, line of business applications, mobile broadband, mobile device management services, and mobile cloud computing services, and measured in customers, ARPUs, revenues and penetration.