Data on the move: IT scrooges' best mate?

Businesses are starting to take to data services as much as their consumer counterparts - which is lucky for them, because prices have fallen sharply over the last few months.

By 2007, businesses will make up 50 per cent of all mobile data downloaded by 2007 - an even split with the consumer market - up from the 20 per cent share it currently holds, according to mobile data company Netsize, with the businesses' taste for data on the up for at least the next few years.

Corporate hunger for data isn't just being led by the usual teleworking staples of mobile email and remote network access - telematics is driving the data deluge too, with users building SMS applications and near field communications including Bluetooth into their supply chains or using them to manage suppliers and employees.

Good news for the mobile companies then? Yes and no. Although business users may be tuning in to the potential of data, consumers are already there - and they're now paying less for it than they were.

Analysts Strategy Analytics report that data prices are heading in the opposite direction. The cost of downloading 1MB of data over GPRS on a pay-per-use basis has dropped 13 per cent since May last year but Phil Taylor, service director at Strategy Analytics said that would still mean downloading an average MP3 song would cost about $25.

For those downloading 10MB, the price has dropped by 40 per cent between May 2003 and August 2004 in Western Europe, with 3 chiefly behind the cheaper prices, as the third generation operator has been responsible for changes in billing, as it sells data on a per-item basis, rather than traditional volume-based pricing.