Platformisation of the Mobile Services domain in the Open Mobile era : strategic challenges for European Mobile Operators

Sammanfattning: This research investigates the European Mobile Telecommunications industry, looking at the biggest strategic challenges Mobile Operators are going to face in the next years. Mobile Services platforms represent the most important paradigm in the industry. Companies as Apple, Google and Facebook have successfully married new consumer devices and Internet platforms with a variety of online services and content undermining Operators ́ central role in the value network. This scenario highlights the importance to investigate how Operators can adopt successful strategies to keep on playing a meaningful role in the Mobile Services domain.These strategies are identifies and mapped adopting a value network model for the Mobile Services domain. This model is the main contribution of this research, tracking new ways of cooperating among them. Operators ́ strategies revolve around two main drivers: defeating networks congestion (investing in network upgrade, optimization & spectrum auctions, charging Service Providers for HQ delivery services and elaborating data price plans for mobile customers) and finding new revenue opportunities (working with Service Providers to offer Location-based services, offering charging services to interested parties and working on Mobile Services platforms).As first step, the investigation offers an overview over the industry, looking at static (actors, technologies, services, devices, end-users and value network configuration) as well as dynamic (trends as Open Mobile, MVNOs, Fixed-Mobile Convergence and Substitution and 4G adoption) aspects. Then the research continues analyzing Mobile Services platforms, proposing an interesting approach to classify scientific articles about this topic. Italy is analyzed as case study and subsequently the model is developed. To conclude the study deals with some reflections about the delicate topic of shaping strategies after a massive usage of end-users data to provide innovative and sophisticated mobile services.