The mobile communications market has for years been characterised as a commodity space. Selling mobile services was largely a matter of who offers the best price. The rise of the smart phone and the pursuant growth in mobile data is changing this.
Price is still important but these devices are so expensive that the amount of hard cash people (consumers) are willing to spend on their mobile contract has grown considerably. I know this from first hand experience having a 19 year old student son who spends not an insubstantial amount of his monthly budget on an iPhone4 contract.
This in turn is a source of angst for businesses who have not traditionally provided the bulk of their staff with top of the range handsets. Unless you have been in a media vacuum over the last six months you will know that this has led to a phenomenon known as Consumerisation of IT and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution.
I have written about this before. As a provider of mobile services