The race amongst smartphone and tablet manufacturers has been getting tighter this year. The playing field has been characterized by long patent disputes and new mergers. Th battle has ntensified over the last few months after Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility and the move by HP to drop its WebOS devices. Google will now be focused on further developing the Android platform. On the other hand, other Android partners may have to develop other alternatives just like Samsung’s intentions of launching the Bada platform. These developments could greatly affect mobile application development.

Despite the rapid growth of mobile business applications, some European mid-sized and small businesses are still having doubts in embracing these cloud services. Security and reliability are still the major issues. However, according to an IT consulting firm, AMI-Partners, SMBs are now ready to adopt mobile cloud-based services.

A SMB market study performed by AMI-Partners, shows heavy adoption by Western European SMBs on mobile cloud-based applications through smartphones and tablets. “In particular SMBs are expressing a strong interest in mobile cloud services that go beyond productivity applications to more business management-focused applications, such as customer relationship management and business intelligence delivered to mobile devices,” says Lorenza Bresica, EMEA Cloud Services Director at AMI Partners in a statement.

A possible increase in mobile business applications presents a potential market opportunity of $13 billion amongst 11 million SMBs in Europe’s major markets which include France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK.

“The capability to integrate powerful business applications on smart phones and tablets will facilitate and accelerate their adoption in business environments. AMI’s study confirms the strong interest of Western European SMB Businesses who are expected to spend $3,010 million in 2011 on smart phone devices, growing to $4,927 million by 2015,” says Bresica.

Services Angle

The study suggests that the appropriate bundled services for mobile devices will be the determining factor in leveraging the European SMB market. SMBs are looking on the added value that mobile devices could provide on top of its usual offerings. They are interested with new business models that would cover all the areas of business management.