Mobile broadband allows virtualisation on the move

Developed countries - particularly those with mobile broadband infrastructure in place - could find it easier to roll out portable virtualisation in the years to come.

Virtualisation is a means of maximising the utilisation of computing resources, usually in one of two main ways.

The first is to pool together a number of devices' processing power - such as by running a single application across multiple servers.

Alternatively, several smaller applications can run on the same server, but in separate 'virtual machines', with all the benefits of dedicated machines per program but less wasted capacity elsewhere on the same hardware.

In terms of mobile virtualisation, a companiesandmarkets.com report predicts that, by 2014, the global market will be worth some $1.2 million (£740,000) as the technology begins to see uptake.

However, developed countries are likely to lead the trend as their less technologically mature counterparts lack the mobile broadband infrastructure to support virtualisation on a large scale.