Despite having the world's fastest-growing mobile phone market, the Asia-Pacific region is lagging behind Europe and the United States in adopting wireless applications to the enterprise market.
This is according to John Chen, the Hong Kong-born chairman, president and chief executive at business software vendor Sybase.
'I think, a couple of years back, Asia was well-positioned to drive the wireless enterprise market, but the region has been preoccupied with the economic downturn,' he told the South China Morning Post.
He said Sars had complicated the situation in China, which leads Asia with about 250 million mobile subscribers. There were also leadership changes in its telecommunications sector.
The result was a 'slow move forward' by industries in the region to adopt wireless business applications.
Mr Chen cited the slow adoption by Asian industries of radio frequency identification technology, which would see the deployment of embedded silicon tags on a wide of range of goods - from garments and livestock to construction beams - to track them through the supply chain.
