Prachi Nema, lead analyst at Visiongain, writes in the company's Managed Services Report that "more than 40 percent of mobile operators in Europe have already chosen a partially or fully outsourced solution for mobile content. Hosting of applications has been highly successful in the US. Many tier-one carriers, including Cingular and Verizon, are using hosted solutions."

Most tier-two and tier-three operators in the US have also chosen hosted solutions. Visiongain estimates that 40 percent of all operators will adopt some kind of managed services strategy by 2011.

"Managed services are going to play a major role in defining the wireless value chain in coming years," Nema says. "Operators will be looking for ways to enhance their competitive advantages in the coming years. They will focus more on customers rather than on managing the network or applications. Look at virtual operators and how they are operating today. The primary reason (they are successful) is they are very close to their customers, they understand what they want, and are able to offer exactly what the customer requires."

In a Pyramid Research report, The New Frontier for Vendors: An Analysis of Network Services and Outsourcing, Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau writes: "As convergence places greater pressure on operators to quickly integrate networks, develop new solutions, and reallocate energies towards evolving end-user needs, vendors have a real opportunity to help their customers succeed."

An anonymous operator executive is quoted in the report as saying: "We understand that a vendor in the global marketplace has insights into the operator experience and ways of succeeding that we don't necessarily have on our own."