Mobile phone companies have long offered free handsets to customers to encourage them to sign up for contracts, but now they have a new lure to persuade people to part with their hard-earned money – free laptop computers.

In doing so, they are threatening to spark a boom in the laptop market and to generate a return on the fortunes they invested on bidding for 3G bandwidths in 2000.

Carphone Warehouse led the way when it started giving away laptops with its home broadband package last September. Now the mobile operators have followed suit. Last month Orange became the first operator to offer laptops in its shops and last week Phones4U said that it would sell laptops and in time may offer them free with mobile broadband contracts.

All are chasing the increasing demand for data to be transmitted to mobile devices as income from voice services in a saturated and increasingly competitive market declines. Last month, Vodafone revealed that service revenues for its first quarter were up 2.1 per cent in the UK thanks to data and messaging, but revenues from phone calls had fallen by 4.4 per cent.

Shaun Collins, managing director of CCS Insight, a technology analysis group, said: “Mobile broadband serves our increasing hunger for connectivity. It means you can be connected all the time. That’s why it will be enormous. The mobile broadband market will be a battleground for mobile operators across Europe.”

Mr Collins believes that mobile broadband is the best thing to happen to mobile operators since the text message, in terms of its ability to drive revenue. He said: “The most important thing is that no subscriber stops their voice and text package – it’s always an addition.

“Some laptops are cheaper to buy than mobile phones, so why wouldn’t operators do it? The sheer economics of it means it’s a wonderful opportunity.

“Whisper it, but we may actually have found a use for 3G. Up until now, 3G has had a better network for data, but 95 per cent of usage has been voice and text and 3G offers nothing to improve that. But, for data, it’s everything.”

Mr Collins expects to see a boom in the laptop market as a result. “It beckons an explosion in laptop growth and an explosion in connectivity and that’s very potent. Most of the additional growth in the laptop market is likely to be connected devices.

“How often do you change your laptop now? Probably never. But if they were free every two years? It would encourage people to think of laptops like mobiles. Laptop prices are also falling as fast as mobile prices.”

In practice, such a change might mean that a lightweight laptop computer and a dongle (a tiny plug-in wireless modem) would win a place in a bag or suitcase for those consumers who want broadband services when they are on the move.

The 3G spectrum for which operators forked out a combined £22 billion in 2000 enables data to be sent at high speeds.

Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, estimates that revenue from mobile data, including text messages, will rise to more than $200 billion (£108 billion) worldwide this year, from $157 billion in 2007.

The move into mobile broadband also signifies the operators’ determination to gain a foothold in the home entertainment market – the music and video downloads, from which operators hope to take a cut.

François Mahieu, device director for Orange UK, said: “Data for us is the key driver. We do hope that bundling mobile broadband with a laptop will drive that. The connected laptop is an absolute key move for us, it brings together this fixed and mobile asset.”

Orange’s “Connected Laptop” deal includes an Asus Eee laptop, a 3G dongle to plug into the side and three gigabytes of downloads for £25 a month, or £45 for five gigabytes, over two years. These laptops can be bought on the Orange site or compared on broadband comparison sites such as Top 10 Broadband.

Carolina Milanesi, head of mobile research for Gartner, said: “Operators need to sell subscriptions. So if they can have you as a subscriber for your phone as well as for your personal computer, they get you twice.”

Going wireless

- More than half a million dongles were sold between February and the end of June this year, according to Ofcom, the communications watchdog

- Gartner estimates that global sales of wireless modems will increase from 15.8 million this year to 51.1 million by 2012

- 47 per cent of people aged 16 to 24 use mobile broadband rather than a fixed broadband line, compared with 26 per cent of those aged 35 to 44

- 133,000 people signed up for mobile broadband connections in June this year, compared with 69,000 in February

Sources: Ofcom, Gartner

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