Standpunkt zum Artikel Hightech fürs Handy // Neue Datendienste und günstigere Tarife
Von Jane Zweig, Chief Executive Officer of The Shosteck Group

The communications industry is a competitive battleground. End-users have been caught in the onslaught. Yet, end-users will be the ultimate winners – as they will accept or reject the services, networks, and devices offered.

If companies play their cards correctly, there will be many winners. Vendors and operators often ask who owns the customer. In reality no one “owns” the customer. The more appropriate question is who captures customer revenues – if anyone.

As networks, devices, and services converge, operators face new competitive threats from all directions. 

Conventional mobile operators fear cannibalizing their existing revenues. Voice and SMS have been cash cows. However, cheap VoIP-based services from competitive “operators” are threatening these conventional income flows.

Infrastructure vendors are selling next generation equipment to mobile operators with the promise of financial rewards from non-voice services. 

Mobile-only operators are under threat if they can’t offer “quadruple play” – voice, video, and data, as well as mobility. Landline telcos and cable companies have invested billions of dollars in infrastructure. Their networks deliver a quality experience – especially for video and other bandwidth intensive services. However, they often lack mobility. Thus, they see quadruple play as key to their future. 

Content providers and media/entertainment companies are also examining their roles in this new world and who their partners should be. They want to ensure that they reap financial rewards and not be cut out of or minimized in revenue sharing arrangements. 

Handset vendors see margins declining. Most new customers are coming from emerging markets where ultralow price is key. The inevitable result is lower gross revenues and even lower profits. 

Consumer electronics manufacturers, notably Apple, are posing new threats to conventional handset vendors. Apple has customer loyalty. Yes, more mobile handsets are sold globally than iPods, last year one billion of the former. But end-users are loyal to iPods. Operators are excited with the possibility of Apple’s iPhone. But, in fact it might be an unsettling product as end-users can sync with their PCs to get “their music.” They don’t need to use a mobile operator at all. 

Then there are the portals. Google, Yahoo!, eBay and others are entering the territories of mobile operators, telcos, and cable companies. They deliver voice, search, location services, e-commerce, communities, messaging and advertising – all domains of mobile operators today or domains that such operators want to conquer. 

End-users don’t really care. They just want a ubiquitous and high-quality service at low cost. End-users won’t give up their cable and fixed broadband networks. They won’t give up WiFi. However, they may embrace alternative broadband technologies if they are faster and lower cost, with mobile WiMax now the “stylish” alternative. 

Commercial success will come from shedding the “paranoia” of completely owning the customer and recognizing that competitive winners will embrace new relationships and partnerships from among what today may be considered competitive threats.