Carphone Warehouse bosses expect competition in the mobile broadband hardware market in the coming months.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei currently makes 95% of all dongles sold, but the likes of ZTE, Sagem and even ‘tier one’ manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung are expected to bring out their own dongles soon.

Carphone chief Charles Dunstone said: ‘We see the arrival of more suppliers in the market. There will be improvements in the purchase price, so even better deals.’

UK boss Andrew Harrison added: ‘Nokia already has mid-range handsets with built-in modems, so there’s no reason they can’t do a dongle.’

It is expected that manufacturers will enter the dongle market imminently as dongles are the major growth area for the operators, and there would be little extra investment in terms of research and development for manufacturers branching out into dongles.