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US Business Smartphone Sales to Increase; SOHO Businesses in the Education and Professional Services Verticals Lead the Way, Says In-Stat

The total small office/Home office sector (SOHO) smartphone market will grow 18% in 2014 compared to 2010, according to In-Stat (www.in-stat.com). The SOHO business category is comprised of US businesses with one to four employees. The education and professional services sector will be the highest growth vertical market.

"Smartphone purchases across all verticals and all US business sizes will increase 14% in 2014 compared to 2010," says Frank Dickson, In-Stat Research Vice President. "As both manufacturers and service providers increase the number of smartphone models and applications, we see US businesses finding greater utility from smartphones, thus enhancing worker productivity. The return on investment for providing smartphones is easily understood by US companies."

Total US business handset market which includes smartphones, feature phones, and basic handsets will see a slight contraction in 2010 before returning to slow but positive growth in 2011. The utilities, mining, and manufacturing vertical markets are exceptions to the trend and will continue to see declines in handsets purchased over the forecast period.

Some additional data points from the research:

• Purchases of basic phones by US businesses will decrease to 3.9 million phones purchased.
• Feature phone purchases by US businesses are set to decline 12.3% from 2010-2014.
• Small business feature phone purchases will decline by 14% from 2010 to 2014.
• The healthcare and social services vertical will purchase over 4.5 million handsets in 2014.

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The In-Stat research, US Business Spending, 2009-2014: Wireless Handset Units by Vertical Market and Size of Business (#IN1005041BTSF) provides forecasts of US business spending for the 2009-2014 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, and vertical market in Microsoft Excel file format. Detail is included for smartphones, feature phones and basic phones.

Forecasts are broken into the following size-of-business segments and sub-segments:

• SOHO business (1 to 4 employees)
• Small business (5 to 9 employees, 10 to 19 employees, and 20 to 99 employees)
• Mid-sized business (100 to 499 employees and 500 to 999 employees)
• Enterprise (1,000 to 4,999 employees, 5,000 to 9,999 employees, and 10,000 or more employees

Forecasts are also broken down further into the following vertical markets:

• Administrative and support services, waste management
• Arts and entertainment
• Construction
• Education
• Finance and insurance
• Forestry, fishing, and agricultural services
• Government
• Healthcare and social services
• Hospitality and food
• Information and communication
• Management of companies and enterprises
• Manufacturing
• Mining
• Other services
• Professional services
• Real estate
• Retail trade
• Transportation
• Utilities
• Wholesale Trade

About In-Stat

In-Stat's market intelligence combines technical, market and end-user research and database models to analyze the Mobile Internet and Digital Entertainment ecosystems.