7 August 2002 A survey of Global 2000 companies suggests that they are in no hurry to deploy mobile applications across their businesses.

In a poll of attendees at its recent GigaWorld conferences in the US and Europe, analysts Giga Information Group found that more than a third of respondents had no mobile strategy at all, while a similar proportion did not know how much money they were spending on mobile applications and communications.

Of those organisations that had deployed or plan to deploy mobile applications during 2002, an overwhelming majority (87%) have done or will do so for simple, employee-facing applications such as email, calendaring and information retrieval. Sixty-two per cent have no plans to deploy external or customer-facing mobile applications.

Giga’s survey revealed that the cost of the support infrastructure was the most common obstacle to investing in mobile applications – almost half of respondents cited this. Worries about coverage and service availability were also a common concern, cited by 37% of respondents.

According to Giga analyst Brownlee Thomas, this lack of interest in mobile deployments may also be due in part to users’ disillusionment with next-generation mobile services such as general packet radio service (GPRS) and third generation mobile technology, both of which have been slow to take off.

The need to cut back on technology investments has also been a factor, with mobile deployments low on the list of IT managers’ priorities.