Ireland's bumper 4G auction impresses

Lots in the press today about Ireland's 4G spectrum being allocated. No real surprises in the winners, who were drawn from the existing network operators, but the price they paid was pretty astounding. The "on target" value of the spectrum was about EUR677 using my market model. As the link shows, Ireland achieved EUR855, 21% over the expected amount.

I suspect that recent turbulence in the ownership of telecoms companies in the country has rather inflated the bidding for what is an important asset but in a small country with limited head room for growth in its telecom market. Still, this bodes well for a good result for the UK when our equivalent assets are auctioned in 2013.

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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...

Differences between Industrial and Digital businesses

Since I'm stuck on a Eurostar crawling through western France I thought I'd use the downtime to share this table I've made on the differences between Industrial and Digital companies across the main business functions. A strange insight into how my mind works... but hopeful a useful summary!

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?

Versatile Amphibian

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