There’s no mistaking its iconic status – whether in the hands of a teenager-obsessed with the latest ringtones and adornments to the business leader who just can’t function without their Blackberry. As the trend towards ever smaller, ever faster chips continues apace, so too does the range of more powerful mobile devices and applications. Small has never been so big…

Having reached the three billion user mark well ahead of its end-of-2007 schedule (according to leading mobile data research house Wireless Intelligence), mobile networks have done in two decades what it took fixed-line telephony over a hundred years to achieve – surpassing the one billion lines milestone. Few breakthroughs have exploded to the point of nearpervasiveness in so few steps. Fashion accessory it may be to many, but the mobile phone is a mission-critical business tool as well as a crucial driver of revenue in sectors as diverse as entertainment and business applications. Buongiorno CEO Andrea Casalani told Deloitte that he expected value-added services to be the golden child of new revenues, currently estimated at $25 but with a CAGR of 20% over the next five years.