The figures for e-commerce differ widely from source to source. Some take into account B2B portals and tendering platforms and add EDI, others differentiate and list B2C and B2B portals seperately.

With its highly developed infrastructure, Europe's users are plum targets for new mobile products. Compared to other worldwide markets, Europe offers a stunning ROI for suppliers of this technology.

Forecasts for growth rate of wireless e-commerce and/or m-commerce users also shows huge potential. Ovum forecasts predicted a growth from the present 6 million users to 500 million users in 2005.

EITO figures predicted a growth from the present 10 million users to 175 million in 2005. With the introduction of GPRS, or 2.5 generation technology, and the future introduction of UMTS - this already staggeringly large market will be developed by the big global players.

The huge investments that have been made in these technologies have to be recovered and the big telcos will do anything to get the market moving.