A colleague and I have been thinking about some of the developments in mobile and have come up with an idea about the structure the mobile industry seems to be heading towards and the strategic issues that could result from the journey towards it. Conceptual at the moment, but it might be interesting, so I thought I'd share: We started with the premise that consumers have become ever more handset-centric, particularly post-iPhone. Operators have therefore moved from subsidising the expensive handset to enable consumers to access their service, to financing their access to devices; We wonder whether this leads to a different view on the operating structure of mobile Telcos. The long anticipated netco/ servco model may be an intermediate state, but perhaps a more apt analogue of the operator’s future model is that of an automobile manufacturer; Why do we say this? Well, the modern auto manufacturer is as more of an assembler of components into a product than a vertically integrated ...
Thoughts on strategy in a Digital Economy