First off an appology to those who do bother to read this blog, I have been busy with work and so not spent as much time writing as I would have liked.
One of the assignments that I have been working on is the possible future of the Handset business. Very soon I think that we will be in a position where the incremental improvements become so small it will be difficult to sell them as the next great leap forward. I think that Italy will be the first country that this happens as nearly 40% of the users have a 3G handset, France will be the last of the Big 5 to adopt such a model as it has the smallest number of 3G users.
I think that what users will adopt is a "Business Watch" play in that they will have a Work Phone, Dress Phone and Weekend Phone which they swap a single SIM between them. The Network will provide its services on a SIM only contract and the user will buy handsets in something closer to the Apple store than CPW.
If we accept the premiss that this might happen, then the networks are going to look at services rather than products that will retain staff. If that is true then M-Payment that is based on SIM NFC could be something that aids just such a retension. Tarriffing will not be something that helps retain the users as regulation will lower prices, just look at what has happened with International Roaming.
What Deloitte does not address is the fact that at present the Networks strategy is to just rent space on the SIM to a Payment Processing Group rather than understand the customer segmentation. But then my Network fails to understand that as well as a relationship with them, I also have relationships with tow of its rivals so how can it understand my Banking relationship?
One of the assignments that I have been working on is the possible future of the Handset business. Very soon I think that we will be in a position where the incremental improvements become so small it will be difficult to sell them as the next great leap forward. I think that Italy will be the first country that this happens as nearly 40% of the users have a 3G handset, France will be the last of the Big 5 to adopt such a model as it has the smallest number of 3G users.
I think that what users will adopt is a "Business Watch" play in that they will have a Work Phone, Dress Phone and Weekend Phone which they swap a single SIM between them. The Network will provide its services on a SIM only contract and the user will buy handsets in something closer to the Apple store than CPW.
If we accept the premiss that this might happen, then the networks are going to look at services rather than products that will retain staff. If that is true then M-Payment that is based on SIM NFC could be something that aids just such a retension. Tarriffing will not be something that helps retain the users as regulation will lower prices, just look at what has happened with International Roaming.
What Deloitte does not address is the fact that at present the Networks strategy is to just rent space on the SIM to a Payment Processing Group rather than understand the customer segmentation. But then my Network fails to understand that as well as a relationship with them, I also have relationships with tow of its rivals so how can it understand my Banking relationship?
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1 comment:
Interesting points, makes Vertu seem quite prescient in many respects.
It also has implications for carriers as they have to support a plethora of handsets that they would need to support (from data configuration to making sure that holding down the 1 key maps to the users voicemail number).
From a retail POV it is a game changer for box shifters like Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U that rely on hardware churn.
Now if all the handsets would use the standard charger as well that would be awesome
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