Pocket-sized mobile devices are everywhere in business. And there are no signs of this heady rate of adoption slowing.

The take-up rate of personal digital assistants (PDAs) is particularly high. Many service industries, especially those that rely on field engineers and sales staff - such as utility companies - have embarked on long-term and well-advanced deployment projects for handheld computers.

Data from Forrester Research suggests that 72 per cent of organisations involved in the utility sectors of electricity, gas, water and sewage are either well-advanced with handheld deployment projects, or have completed them.

This figure is also high in manufacturing - traditionally a heavy user of wireless mobile computing devices. Some 53 per cent of manufacturers have travelled a long way down the mobile and PDA deployment route, and 62 per cent in logistics and raw materials production.

Forrester's research also points to the problem of uncontrolled adoption of PDAs within business. Of the companies surveyed, 40 per cent admitted that their staff used their own PDA hardware for business purposes and applications.

Data from Analysys highlights the many business functions that are beginning to benefit from the falling cost of both mobile devices and wireless data services.

Strong demand for email in the field has led to growing adoption of devices such as the Blackberry email pager from Rim, while individual users' thirst for news, traffic information and general web access has also fuelled General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) sign-up and purchases of wireless local area network (Lan) cards.

According to Analysys, nearly 75 per cent of small and medium-size businesses are buying into mobile web access, 40 per cent are taking services to allow access to news feeds and nearly 90 per cent are adopting mobile email services, using either wireless Lan or cellular data services (including global system for mobile communications, GPRS and high-speed circuit switched data ).

Adoption of mobile data services such as GPRS has taken place in waves rather than a consistent growth curve. Early adoption of GPRS was hampered by a chronic shortage of handsets (in the UK at launch there was just a single model from a single manufacturer - Motorola).

As more devices came onto the market, adoption grew steadily, buoyed by occasional spurts of promotional activity from device makers and mobile networks, and by limited support from laptop and PDA manufacturers such as Dell and Compaq.

The end result was that by the end of 2001, there were just one million users across Europe, a third of the achievable market.

Early data suggests that this figure has experienced another major spike, with GPRS-dependent services such as picture messaging being launched in mainland Europe by Vodafone and T-Mobile, and in the UK with the launch of GPRS-enabled smartphones such as the XDA from O2.

The research teaches us that spending on PC desktops has fallen, but has not stifled the growth of handheld computer devices. However, spending on these has also fallen.

The next major test will come when the next generation of combined PDA mobile phones, smartphones and the first wave of third-generation-compatible mobile handsets come to market in the UK in time for Christmas.