Nbc News

[The] incredibly user-friendly smartphone has captured the North American public's imagination and their wallets into the realm of mobile multimedia customer interactions. It has pushed competitors to make their handsets more user-friendly and functional.

Blame too the suppliers who are developing new user-friendly applications that are enabling their workforces and consumers to more fully utilize the wireless channel. These complete a virtuous circle that will prompt even more wireless use.

Blame also the expansion of 3G and faster networks and more competitive rates. Wireless has become so feasible and cost-effective that more households are dropping their landlines and that some businesses are not buying or are doing away with bulky laptops. Why have multiple boxes, phones, and connections when one multichannel go-anywhere device does it all?

The faster speeds are prompting more firms and users to deploy and enable browsers to access consumer and work applications in real time via the web, observes Angie Hirata, worldwide director of marketing and business development, Maximizer Software. More Web sites are becoming optimized for mobile users while instead of mobile-only browsers more devices now have full browsers that can render desktop applications, adds Vidya Drego, Senior Analyst, Forrester. Full browsing she says makes searches faster and easier.

Martin Schneider, director of product marketing, SugarCRM, says that in turn mobile browsers have sufficiently matured to enable bandwidth-intensive consumer activities like e-mail and view YouTube on iPhones and FLASH animations and JPEG files as on fixed computers. That bodes well for business applications which tend to but not always smaller: the exceptions being graphics-heavy fields such as media/entertainment.

"These innovations open the floodgates to anything you can do on a fixed desktop or laptop computer you can do on a mobile browser," says Schneider.

He has also seen mobile applications grow from a very limited set of uses such as warehouse...