Corporate Mobility Becomes Mainstream and Outlines the Shape of the Future with Mobile Business 2.0. Part 1

Gartner: The most significant trends shaping the Wireless and Mobile industry. The most significant trends in the wireless and mobile industry that will affect people during the next five years.

1. Mobile operators under threat Mobile operators are under increasing threat from the large Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo!, who are targeting a slice of the revenue from millions of subscribers and are prepared to disrupt established business models to get it. The next generation of the Internet, Web 2.0, has opened up opportunities for these 'new kids on the block' to move into the mobile market, as illustrated by Google's recent deal with Vodafone to develop search engines on mobile phones. Internet brands have few inhibitions and have no respect for, or legacy with, established mobile approaches. They are prepared to experiment and are well positioned to assimilate new ideas into their services collection as they have no existing mobile revenue or customer base to protect. When developing new ideas or products, traditional mobile operators think in terms of 'how to provide new chargeable services based on technology', whereas Internet players will innovate something new (e.g. Google map), and then see how it takes off. This is a race for innovation and operators are not in pole position. There are opportunities for operators to partner with Internet based providers such as Google or other application sources to package multiple services and make them available on mobile phones. For example, partnering with an Internet Instant Messaging (IM) provider and enriching the service with improved mobile presence to create a really compelling application. Mobile operators will continue to face threats from additional business areas. Pressure on international roaming and termination revenues for voice, email and IM will put at risk short message service (SMS), and saturated mature markets will encourage price competition, which will make customer acquisition difficult and more expensive. Gartner warned that some mobile operators will see their profit margins decrease by 20-25 percent in the next three to five years. Opportunities for mobile operators moving forward include convergence and bundling, new managed services, new client devices and new partnerships with third parties.

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