Handset brands moving into dongle market

The new Disruptive Analysis report on Mobile Broadband Computing forecasts continued medium-term growth for external USB modems for PCs, albeit after a recession-based flattening of demand in 2009. One of the comments in it is that more handset manufacturers should consider entering the USB modem market.

So it's interesting timing to see that Nokia has just announced entry into the HSPA dongle marketplace.

This follow on from SonyEricsson doing the same earlier this year, and adding in extra functions like GPS and decent industrial design. Then LG, its LTE chipset announcement the other day, also mentioned that it is working on a prototype data card. And Toshiba does this cool-looking dongle/basic phone/MP3/memory hybrid thing called a G450.

I wonder if we'll see any cool-looking Apple-branded dongles at some point....