Mobile Internet 3.0
How Operators Can
Become Service Innovators and Drive Profitability
Sponsored
by Juniper Networks
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The mobile ecosystem is going through significant shifts in
consumer behavior, the value-chain alignment, and the strategies
required in managing the profitability of the service business.
Operators around the world are experiencing tremendous mobile
data growth. While the mobile data revenues are increasing, the
margins are decreasing for many operators. As the percentage of
the smartphones on the network increases, the data business is
primarily becoming an access business which is difficult
to sustain over the long-haul.
Additionally, it is becoming clear that the long-term value will
be in the portfolio of value-added services (VAS). As we slowly
migrate into the Mobile Internet 3.0 world where mobile data
becomes the primary source of service revenues, operators have a
fundamental choice to make – either learn to live with the
utility business that pushes the margins downwards by 30-50% or
selectively compete and/or collaborate with the OTT (over the
top) players where they can offer compelling solutions and
packages to their customer base and beyond.
Operators who are fully able to grasp the changes occurring in
the ecosystem and are willing to refocus will position
themselves for higher profitability in the coming years.
A fundamental rethink of the network and the business models is
required. Rather than leaving all the VAS business to others,
operators should look at ways to launch new services, to
micro-segmented consumer base, to enable APIs and services that
the developer ecosystem can build on, and to look at the core
network to enable incremental revenue streams.
The pace at which the new services are launched needs to
accelerate and the marginal cost of the introduction needs to go
down significantly. By architecting the “network as a platform,”
operators will have more flexibility in deploying an open and
programmable network that not only provides operational
efficiencies and insights but also paves the way for new
generation of services such as mobile cloud, mobile security,
health care, and identity management.
The paper looks at the global trends in mobile data and the need
for new approaches to operator services that can help increase
the mobile data margins and help operators play a more decisive
and enabling role in the mobile ecosystem. The paper provides an
operator blueprint for succeeding in the Mobile Internet 3.0 era
by discussing the operating principles and the long tail of VAS.
Several strategies and application areas are analyzed that can
help operators in building a viable VAS strategy and sustainable
profit streams.
We will be keeping a close eye on the trends in the wireless
data sector in our blog, twitter
feeds, future
research reports,
and articles.
The next US Wireless Data Market update will be released in Mar
2012. The next Global Wireless Data Market update will be issued
in Apr 2012.
Disclaimer: Some of the companies mentioned in this paper are
our clients.
