We're getting to that time of year when the blogosphere is starting to turn its eye to the coming new year and trying to guess what's coming up. For those whose business relies on anywhere/anytime access to all the gear they need in the office, it promises to be a bumper year.

While 3G and NextG have been in the news recently, the services haven't yet hit their full stride. Next year, I reckon all the Aussie carriers will have HSDPA services. What this means is that the WiFi hotspot business will see some pressure, through the added competition, leading to better pricing (hooray) and having only a small speed loss when you're not in the office. Personally, having been a 3G user with a service from Three (the Aussie arm of Hutchison) I'm looking forward to the speed bump.

The mobile phone market is likely to get a shot in the arm. It seems that a Taiwanese company has got the deal to make 12 million handsets for Apple. I'm sure that news leak has made the folks in Cupertino grumpy. How they'll sell the so called iPhone and what technology they'll use (GSM, CDMA) is still unknown. Some are postulating that Apple will buy spare capacity from a number of carriers and set up their own carrier business (think iTunes/iPod - own the ecosystem). I doubt that'll be the case but I hope it's a GSM phone so that there's a chance we'll see it downunder.

Will the iPhone come to Australia? Is this what'll look like? So many questions.

Finally, the decision by HTC to start marketing its own phones rather than having mobs like i-mate, O2, Dopod and HP rebadge them opens a new dimension to the smartphone market. As HTC can make and sell its own devices this should, in theory, lead to better pricing for consumers. It also means that those companies will have to look to other manufacturers and designers. That means new ideas and more innovation.

2007 will be a good year for mobile office workers.