Apple has announced its biggest quarterly profit ever, with many commentators and the company attributing the success to both the iPhone and Mac.

Jeremy Green, the practice leader of mobile at Ovum, said the iPhone is instrumental for a number of reasons, making his comments at the Westminster eForum Keynote Seminar entitled More than Talk… The Future of Mobile.

He said that it has transformed business relationships to a great degree despite the fact that many people may see it more for its aesthetically-pleasing credentials.

Mr Green continued: "Apple is at the centre of this new version of the business model. They take responsibility for the end to end experience of the customer, and they also sit in the middle of the value chain."

He added that Apple manages the relationship with the software developer and this model of business is "much more developer friendly" and has a number of benefits for the consumer as well.

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.