Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) will have racked up 170 million subscribers by 2012 but consumers will lag behind businesses to sign up to the tech.
Almost 9 percent of businesses will use FMC devices versus just less than 5 percent for the total number of consumer voice subscribers, according to research from analyst house Informa Telecoms & Media.
FMC is predicted to account for more than 5 percent of the market by 2012, Informa's Fixed Mobile Convergence Strategic Report predicts.
FMC allows users to make calls over both VoIP (voice over IP) and mobile networks from a single handset. Revenues for this tech will reach US$33.4 billion by 2012, Informa calculates.
Paul Merry, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said FMC makes sense for businesses because it enables a number of attractive services, such as unified messaging, and a single managed communication account. But consumer FMC currently only offers the convenience of a single bill and discounted pricing.
As a consequence, said Merry, consumer FMC "faces a substantial challenge in capturing the consumer imagination".
Dual mode handsets will make up 14 percent of all handsets sold to enterprises by 2012 and 4 percent of commercial users in Europe will be on FMC services by that time, telecoms watcher Analysys predicts.
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