Does the mobile cloud have a silver lining?

A lot of experts predict that mobile cloud computing will really come to the fore this year.

According to the Guardian, almost 50% of the UK population owned a smartphone at the end of October last year, and sales of smartphones are expected to exceed PC and laptop sales this year.

Companies used to hand out Blackberrys to their employees but now iPhones and Android are also being adopted in corporate settings. In fact Android is predicted to account for 50% of the worldwide market this year, followed by iPhone with 18%. Blackberry’s share of the market is expected to shrink to a mere 12%.

It’s not surprising then that there is an increasing emphasis on mobile cloud services. We now have DropBox, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s SkyDrive and users are getting used to accessing and uploading data from the cloud using their mobile device.

Visiongain expects to see revenue from mobile cloud services reach $45 billion within the next five years. Mobile cloud applications will contribute the greatest revenue, as smartphones become ever popular and 3G network coverage spreads around the world. The development of cloud based mobile applications will be further enhanced by enhancements to technology such as HTML5 and BONDI.

It would appear that the future is bright for mobile cloud computing and customers should soon start to see an increase in the number of companies offering carrier-cloud services and providing improved levels of service.