Should spam carry over to the short messaging service (SMS) market, it could potentially stop the industry before it has chance to start, according to one technology specialist.

Alistair Hill, an analyst at mobile technology specialist M:Metrics, said the problems of spam - which already cause trouble for millions of email inboxes around the world - could ruin SMS as a "nice way" of communication, much in the same way that he believes emailing has been.

He said that many companies were profiting from the medium, which was more personal than other methods and, when used rightly and effectively, could make or break a good campaign.

Mr Hill continued: "The flip side to that is if you're sending out without having their consent and without having knowledge about them then you're just going to annoy them."

According to a survey by M:Metrics for Airwide Solutions last week, the average Brit spent the most money on their mobile content, downloading £5.75 worth of content per year.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.