All-in-one or one-for-one?
Really interesting. I just wrote a post forecasting the future relationship of service and product. one day later, BW wrote an article talking about Asia's trend on mashup services in mobile phone. in a sense, I hold totally opposite point to BW.
In the article, author took China mobile for example(so do I:)). China mobile's CEO said the company will turn mobile phone into a swiss army knife which can support all digital and web applications. article also mentioned other asian telecom operators express the similiar plans too. it seems a big blue ocean is being unveiled for telecom operators and handset makers. is it feasible?
I think there is chance but uncertainty is large. why are executives in these companies so optimistic? they have an important hypothese. that is only mobile phone can make phone call. but actually it's not true in future. the biggest threat is from internet. although internet is operated by telecom company, many applications based on internet are out of their control. they just provide bandwidth and infrastructure. try to imagine, if someday people can use ipod+skype/something else to make phone call, will people still carry the mobile phone? at least I will not. the meaning of being for mobile phone is only making phone call. can telecom companies keep this privilege forever? I think it's hard because world goes to open source!
So the best way for telecom companies is not all-in-one, but one-for-one. that means concentrating mobile phone on voice business & SMS and provide professional hardware for specific service/application. there are 2 advantages:
1) relying less on handset/other hardware makers: if telecom company puts all eggs in one basket, their competencies are mostly controled by the mobile phone suppliers. if there is no much technology difference between mobile phone suppliers, there will be very intense competition among operators to gain the consumers. but if mobile phone supplier has unique technology consumers interested in, operators will lose strong bargain power.
2) easily implementing differentiation strategy: different consumer has different service demand. for instance, some people like VOD or vedio podcast, and some people like writing blog as long as they are free, etc. so these niche markets are useful to implement differentiation strategy according to self competency and resources. I think it not only benefit individual company but also build a good environment for telecom industry and internet industry.
I reinforce again I believe mobile phone (other consuming electronics) as a hardware will be free and diverse services will dominate business world.
Written by Keanu Zhang - Visit Website
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