Mobile broadband 'to receive tablet boost'

The rising popularity of tablet computer systems will make mobile broadband more successful in the coming five years, according to a report from ABI Research.

In its recent study, the insight provider estimates that, by 2016, the global market for mobile broadband will be worth some $36 billion (£22 billion).

Favourable pricing plans in the early days of widespread tablet usage have been a key step towards this, making it easy for companies to adopt the technology.

Businesses in particular are far more likely to add mobile broadband capabilities to their tablet systems than to their laptops or netbooks.

ABI Research claims tablets are connected to the internet by enterprise customers in 33 per cent more cases than either of the alternative portable computing devices.

Enterprise Mobility Market Data, the document in which the information is published, is just nine pages long but offers some 80 tables of data and a further 17 graphical charts.