Mobile operators are increasingly coming up with credible and commendable new services for the global market.
A key theme from the recently concluded FT Innovate conference in London is that operators should continue to innovate in mobile services for various strategic benefits.
Another consensus is that successful innovation must leverage core strengths, but operators should go further, using their core assets to claim new ground beyond their traditional base.
Finally, and above all, forming partnerships are the key to successful innovations.
The mobile industry’s continued enthusiasm towards launching new services, even in areas where their efforts have previously proved futile, is primarily due to two major, interrelated challenges.
Rapid, well-received innovations from outside the industry – especially those from the likes of Google and Apple – are threatening to remove operators from the premium segments of the value chain.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this will reduce the operator’s role in the value chain to nothing more than a bit pipe. To avoid this outcome, operators have continued to be unrelenting in their quest to innovate.
The primary focus of this activity remains the operator’s ability to leverage its core assets and strengths to deliver new services.