28 February 2003 Spending on wireless middleware software — the technology that takes data from disparate enterprise systems and serves it up to wireless devices of all kinds — will increase dramatically in the next four years.

According to IT market research company Ovum,

wireless middleware software sales will grow to $1.7 billion by 2007, from $714 million in 2003.

Of this total revenue, Ovum predicts that the enterprise market will account for $421 million of sales, while network operators will account for the remaining $294 million. But sales to operators will ultimately supersede sales to enterprises, according to Ovum forecasts, growing to some $1 billion.

As more suppliers target the wireless middleware market, wireless equipment suppliers, such as Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia, will increasingly come head-to-head with enterprise software suppliers, including IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, says analyst Jessica Figueras at Ovum.

“The emergence of wireless standards has thrown open the market for wireless middleware,” said Figueras. Converging standards, she added, means that mainstream IT vendors can increasingly sell to operators, without necessarily having to support dozens of telco-specific standards and technologies.

“Carrier-class isn’t the badge of exclusivity that it used to be. And wireless vendors will find their total share of operators spending dwindling rapidly,” she concludes.