A new report by research firm ABI has predicted that between 2010 and 2014 the yearly sales figures for products compatible with mobile broadband will jump significantly. It believes that in four years time over 58 million portable products will be sold with built-in mobile broadband connectivity, which is 55 times the number of equivalent devices sold back in 2008.

The leap in sales will be driven by various factors, including falling wireless broadband prices, but will largely occur as ever more manufacturers integrate mobile broadband connectivity into a wider number of devices.

ABI expects to see producers of eBook Readers, handheld gaming devices, laptops and portable media players begin to add in mobile broadband connectivity where before they would have used Wi-Fi instead. Mobile broadband has obvious benefits over Wi-Fi as you do not have to find an unsecured wireless network to start using the internet and mobile broadband covers a significantly wider area than all the Wi-Fi hot spots in the UK.

At the moment any mobile broadband connection requires that a device is tethered to a certain network, so when you buy a dongle you will need to then commit yourself to a major provider. However, ABI believes that in the future there could be far more freedom in this area and that monthly wireless broadband prices could be ditched in favour of products which have the cost of the connection built into the one-off price, leaving consumers free to use it without worrying about minimum contracts or data allowances.

ABI’s Jeff Orr commented that network providers would have to adapt their business models and payment schemes to fit in with the changes that are coming in the mobile broadband market place. Simon Gerrard of Simple Broadband agreed, concluding that “the popularity and performance of mobile broadband can only improve, so things are looking very good for consumers.”