Businesses are looking to get mobile in a big way in the next 12 to 18 months, with 60 percent having or planning a mobility strategy, according to Mokena, IL-based Nemertes Research study.

Unified communications are also high on the corporate shopping list, according to a brand new Infonetics research report. The Campbell, CA-based telecom research firm reports 21 percent growth between 2005 and 2006 for sales of unified communications applications worldwide. Further, Infonetics predicts annual growth to continue “in the high double digits” through 2010. Infonetics also reports that Avaya leads the worldwide unified messaging market in 2006, but Nortel, Cisco, and Alcatel-Lucent are gaining.

Mobio — the people who think that you don’t really want the Web on your phone, just parts of it — now lets you take Twitter, Digg and Kaboodle on the go with three new free, downloadable widgets.

Mobile applications are a natural for health care. And the iPhone is a natural for drawing attention. So Unbound Medical has recently announced that its mobile medical knowledge system now runs on the iPhone. The company has been selling medical applications for handhelds since 2000.

Ucompass is also looking for iPhone strokes for its iPhone-enabled wireless systems for educators.

Avanquest Software’s Mobile PhoneTools will now be bundled with Lenovo’s Bluetooth-enabled notebook PCs, letting any compatible Bluetooth cell phone function as a modem when it’s connected to the laptop. No PCMCIA card or WiFi hot spot needed.

Another way to send voice messages without a phone call from Buzz Interactive.

Yesterday VoIP, Inc. launched the beta of its new communications portal Click4me that lets you make VoIP calls through any browser-enabled mobile device. The portal also offers email, calendaring, and other office applications.

Pre-paid long distance provider OneSuite yesterday debuted its new hybrid VoIP/PSTN service, OS Hybrid. Like the Prius, it lets you keep more green.

Motorola gets closer to an end-to-end portfolio with its acquisition of Leapstone Systems and its content creation, management and delivery platform.

Also looking toward the content delivery game, Level 3 today announced its acquisition of broadband and mobile video management and streaming services Servecast, Ltd.

The Rumor Mill Keeps Grinding: Low-end iPhone in the pipeline? Dream on, says Newsweek’s Thomas Claburn.

Software-as-a-service company Skyytek apparently isn’t listening to Gartner’s nay saying about corporate iPhone use. The company is adopting the iPhone for its mobile employees and is testing it with its on-demand ERP/CRM system, NetSuite. What’s also interesting here is ERP as a mobile phone app. Read Skyytec’s evaluation here.

Another company bringing business apps to the phone is Swedish software company HansaWorld. New offerings for the UK market for PDAs and Nokia business phones include credit card payment processing and filing your income tax.

If you’re an AT&T Pro, Elite and FastAccess customer you now have free WiFi access at any AT&T hotspot. Other customers get access for $1.99 a month. Fierce Broadband Wireless seems to think that iPhone customers are excluded.

TCM Net has launched a new channel on Voice Peering. The value proposition here is connecting calls without touching the PSTN.

Jajah for the iPhone — not! So says Scott Gilbertson of Wired.

Rumor Mill: Full 3G iPhone service by Christmas according to virtual journalist Robert X. Cringley.

Global businesses have big plans for mobile handsets. That’s according to UK research firm Coleman Parkes Research. Seven out of 10 expect to be using mobile VoIP within two years and many are already a variety of business applications. But with the new flexibility comes a whole new dimension of security and management challenges. Robert Jacques at vunet.com has the story.

But while businesses see huge benefits to mobile VoIP, mobile carriers have been circling the wagons, blocking mobile VoIP calls and writing restrictive terms into their contracts. Now UK mobile VoIP provider Vyke is fighting back with a standalone software upgrade that circumvents the removal of handset VoIP capabilities by carriers.

“The incumbent mobile network operators must be feeling very threatened by mobile VoIP,” observed Vyke Communications CEO Kjetil Bøhn in today’s press release. “In the short amount of time that this immerging technology has been in the market, they have already responded by removing VoIP capabilities from mobile handsets that they sell and by introducing very restrictive contract terms prohibiting their customers from using their networks to access services such as VoIP and third party peer-to-peer messaging clients. Vyke has been dedicating itself to circumventing these obstructionist tactics by developing our own stand-alone mobile VoIP application as well as providing access to large scale wireless networks on behalf of our customers.”

Even sweeter for customers, Vyke’s agreement last month with WiFi hotspot provider The Cloud Networks gives subscribers free access through any of the Cloud’s 9,500 UK and European hotspots.

Spanish WiFi company Fon says it has given away 7,000 routers to people living next to a Starbucks to encourage them to provide free or cheap Internet access to the ubiquitous café’s customers. Not surprisingly, the program is called Fonbucks. Mark Kapco at RCR Wireless News has the story.

Last week Truphone announced a whole slew of new features including SMS over IP for unlimited free texting, automatic WiFi network connection, and support for multiple SIM cards.

Steve Jobs has a solution for the AT&T’s sluggish Internet connection, which he outlined in a June 29 Wall Street Journal interview: “What we’ve done with the iPhone is we’ve made it so that it will automatically switch to a known Wi-Fi network whenever it finds it. So you don’t have to go hunting around, resetting the phone, flipping a switch or doing anything. Most of us have Wi-Fi networks around us most of the time at home and at work. There’s often times a Wi-Fi network that you can join whether you’re sitting in a coffee shop or even walking along the street piggybacking on somebody’s home Wi-Fi network. What we found is the combination is working really well.”

I particularly like the part about piggybacking on someone else’s home network. Sounds like the wonder boy of Cupertino lives in a separate ethical universe from the rest of us mere mortals. One where it might be OK to, say, share music online without paying iTunes $.99.

Industry disruption specialist Jajah is jumping on the Apple iPhone bandwagon to promote its mobile Jajah service. This isn’t anything new, but it’s certainly timely to remind customers — if they can get the iPhone service connected, of course — that there is an alternative to AT&T’s extortionate rates.