Compass Intelligence: U.S. businesses will spend $11.6 billion on mobile apps by 2012

A new research from Compass Intelligence argues that businesses in the U.S. will spend roughly $11.6 billion on mobile applications by 2012.

This year alone, U.S. businesses are expected to spend an estimated $4.9 billion on such mobile apps as productivity, contact management, GPS/navigation, email, security, file sharing, collaboration and others.

Compass argues there are several factor that will influence the double-digit annual growth over the next 5 years — including the growth in remote and telecommuting employees, the movement in “Open Mobile Devices,” and the explosion of new and emerging apps. According to the research company, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) are both leading vendors in promoting this last driving trend and this is expected to open up a whole new world of business access and productivity over the next decade.

Highlights from the research:

• Healthcare industry is expected to spend an estimated $1.1 billion by 2012, while the government and services industries are expected to be the top spenders on mobile applications.
• Roughly $6.3 billion will be spent on mobile apps by the small and mid-sized businesses by 2012.
• Collaboration (Shared Calendars, contacts), business or company instant messaging, CRM, and applications specific to the company or industry ranked among the top applications planned to be rolled out to employees on mobile devices within the next 6 months.

More information is available from Compass Intelligence’s website.