Keeping up with the Joneses: the cars of Mobile World Congress

Connected vehicles are a big theme again this year at Mobile World Congress, with many operators and OEMs rolling out their automotive partners on their stands. Since all of them are secretly just trying to keep up with the Joneses, I thought it might be entertaining to engage in a game of AutoTelco Top Trumps...

Typically in this game a Ford Focus would score pretty low down the pecking order. In this case, however, Ford score big points for actually making theirs. Plus, they brought an electric one and that has enormous torque. And a mediocre app. So there.

Next up AT&T, who, being wealthy Americans brought not one, not two, but three VeeHicles to the Congress. Their all American Cadillac CTS and electric ETS were rendered anonymous by a mighty Audi S7. 'It's not electric' said the demonstrator, 'it's plugged in to save the battery'. Bonus points to AT&T for surrounding the ETS with Virtual Reality headsets: another must have stand item in 2015.

China Mobile only managed a solitary Cadillac ATS on their booth. The lonely Caddy was the poverty-spec 3.6 too, scoring nearly no points. Envious glances must have been cast across to AT&T...

...and to Vodafone, who rolled in a white Porsche Panamera e-Hybrid. Flair... But I think Guards Red would have been more appropriate so no victory for Vodafone. Soz. Close but no cigar for Qualcomm, who scored massive points for the Maserati... But it runs QNX so I'm not going for that, nor LG's Audi RS5 convertible, complete with obscene red detailing. The only telco bit is the key though. Fail.

In the end, I was totally disappointed by AutoTelco Top Trumps. I only saw one thing that was remotely compelling: T-Mobile's partnership with BMW and a publisher, which uses tablets in car to create an experience similar to the entertainment system on an aeroplane. It's a simple, fun navigation experience with lots of child-friendly features like a virtual dashboard that lets the kids see how fast the car is going, where it is and whether they're nearly there yet. So the unlikely winner of AutoTelco Top Trumps is T-Mobile.

Well done to them.

And of course, this is a competition and we need a loser. And that loser is definitely Samsung. Bad enough that their connected Seat appeared to have no obvious Samsung tech in it, but it also committed the cardinal sin of being accompanied by a showroom specifications board listing one of the key features of their connected vehicle as: "chromed roof rails". Those Joneses have definitely been kept up with.

More cars of MWC:

Impacts of a handset leasing model on mobile telcos

Following yesterday's post, here's some related thinking on the impacts on operators of handset leasing. Handset sales represent around 25% of operator revenues in a typical European market, but generate only around 5% of margin. It may therefore be the case that the scenario described would lead operators to a more profitable structural model than exists today. Oil companies are consistently and acceptably profitable, despite being (literally in some cases) the ‘dumb pipe’ that operators are so desperate to avoid becoming. One of the reasons for the oil majors sustained profitability is clear focus on their role in the value chain – to supply the fuel that enables transportation, relying primarily on location, then brand and finally product innovation to compete. BP or Shell do not need to subsidise the purchase of a car in order to drive consumption of fuel because consumers are ‘hooked’ on it (it gets them from place to place) and there are many credible car manufacturers an

Value drivers for telecoms retail

I've been doing a really large number of driver trees recently - we've taken to using them on every project to get really into the guts of value creation for businesses and thus decide where to focus initiative development (How To Win, if you're keeping score). Anyhow, I had to pause for thought recently to work out how to represent the subscription aspect of telecoms retail for a client. Since it took me a minute, I thought I'd share... its lack of elegance suggests that its not quite right, although it was enough to demonstrate that there was a certain lack of coverage in the initiatives that my client was pursuing and thus spark a debate. Enjoy.

Chief Strategy Officers II - Career Development

Here's a follow up to my earlier post on the starting point of Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) careers in the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 companies - a visualisation of two steps in their careers: their first employer or job and the job they had before they got their current position. Lots of work went into this... so any insights that you glean from the visualisation would be great to hear about :). The CSO is a crucial strategic role on the executive (!) and the owner of the tone and philosophy of decision making across much of the business, knowingly or unknowingly. Scrutiny of their experience in defining the process and language of strategic management is therefore appropriate not just amongst their executive peers, but in my view amongst shareholders. The days when being very smart and able to analyse large amounts of data were enough to be a CSO are basically gone... has the profession moved on enough to cope?

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