• Telco 2.0 strategies and OTT threats: Getting tougher for tech stars
• Digital Consumer/Voice & Messaging: Not as clear cut as anyone thought
• Customer Experience: of course it matters, but…
• Network-as-a-Service/APIs: signs of progress
• M-Commerce (wallets, payments, advertising): is it time now, again?
• Cloud: round 2, coming up
• Big Data: round 2, coming up
• Personal Data: an epic struggle
• M2M: getting real but how to make money?

[Ed: This is a special review of the news from the last 6 months in preparation for next week’s EMEA Executive Brainstorm, 12-13 June 2012 in London. The review lines up the key stories against the agenda, covering the latest on Telco 2.0 strategies, telcos in the cloud, M-Commerce, and M2M. There’s top speakers from Amazon, Google, Barclays, Ofcom and the top EMEA telcos and only a few places left so register here now, call +44 (0) 207 247 5003, or email contact@stlpartners.com for last minute place.]

Telco 2.0 strategies and OTT threats: getting tougher for tech stars

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 News Analysis: 'OTT' Wars, Big Data and other key disruptions" »

Posted at 10:06 AM | Link to this article

As part of our ongoing Telco 2.0 research agenda we have been defining and sizing the strategic opportunities for telcos from M2M. This was a key area of focus at our recent New Digital Economics Silicon Valley event (report here for subscribers) and will be explored in detail at our upcoming Digital Things 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London on June 13th.

Recent analysis conducted by our partner Beecham Research highlights how value is migrating from the basic connectivity element of M2M towards differing forms of service enablement. In response to this, business models based on managed connectivity are becoming increasingly common.

Continue reading "Digital Things 2.0: M2M Value Innovation for Telcos " »

Posted at 8:19 AM | Link to this article

We’re currently hard at work on a major new strategy research report Cloud 2.0: Strategic Opportunity for Telcos, and will be sharing some of the initial findings at the EMEA event in London on 12-13 June.

We’ll also be joined by some of the top practitioners in the field including Vodafone, Verizon, Orange, Amazon, and Telefonica, and will be exploring and discussing the cloud value chain in depth, reviewing the strategies of key players from all sides of the market, and putting forward options for telcos of different kinds getting into the cloud business. There’s more on who’s coming and what we’ll be covering below - please email us at contact@stlpartners.com to find out more about joining the event or participating in the research.

Background to the new research

A key hypothesis emerging from our cloud research (including Cloud 2.0: don’t blow it, telcos and Cloud 2.0: Telcos to grow Revenues 900% by 2014) and analysis from the Silicon Valley and London brainstorms, is that the cloud computing market is heading for a second wave of disruption.

Very large numbers of enterprises are still to take their first steps in cloud computing. For example, at the Silicon Valley event, Bain Consulting argued that two key groups of customers - essentially, the mass adoption phase in the classic diffusion model - are still to come, and that the size of these groups implies a very high growth rate for the sector still to come, in “Round Two”.

In parallel, key technology developments, such as OpenStack, CloudStack, and the Open Data Centre and Open Compute initiatives, are all heading in the direction of greater compatibility between providers (a round-up of links is here), a trend which is likely to reduce the apparent first-mover advantage enjoyed by Amazon Web Services, Google, et al and make it far easier to migrate between platforms.

Does ‘first mover’ advantage matter?

History suggests that first mover advantage is more often illusory than it is real.

Continue reading "Cloud 2.0: Strategic Opportunity for Telcos" »

Posted at 3:14 PM | Link to this article

At our forthcoming Digital Commerce 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London, 12-13 June, we will be presenting new research exploring the business case for mobile money services from both a telco’s perspective and a bank’s perspective. We will consider whether the business case is strong enough to justify the roll out of new hardware, as advocates of NFC maintain, or whether mobile money services should primarily be implemented in software. To find out more about our research services, to join the event, or find out how else you can participate, please email us on contact@stlpartners.com.

Background to the research

Mobile money services are gaining momentum across the world. In fact, some experts believe we are on the cusp of a mobile money revolution. At the recent Digital Commerce 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in Silicon Valley (report here for subscribers), Antonio Benjamin, Managing Director, CTO, Global Transaction Services at Citi, forecast that in 2014 there will be $1.13 trillion in global mobile transactions, up from $60 billion in 2010 (see slide below). That represents a head-turning compound annual growth rate of more than 100% per annum.

These bullish forecasts are being fuelled by the proliferation of mobile money transfer services across the developing world, in the wake of the success of M-Pesa in Kenya, and the expanding pipeline of handsets equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, which can be used to enable mobile payments at point of sale.

But how much value will mobile money transactions actually create and for whom? Will consumers be the primary beneficiaries or will the entire mobile money value chain prosper?

Continue reading "Digital Commerce 2.0: Show me the (Mobile) Money" »

Posted at 1:52 PM | Link to this article

We are delighted to be partnering with this year’s NGMN Industry Conference & Exhibition taking place in San Francisco, June 13th - 15th, and we’ll be represented by Dean Bubley, one of our Senior Associates, who’d leading a session on Day Two of the event on Global Mobile Broadband Devices. Do catch up with Dean if you go.

Further details: The NGMN Industry Conference & Exhibition is taking place at City View at Metreon Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, USA.

This year’s conference will be a platform to explore the latest status of LTE network deployment and operation, to review the upcoming network and device trends and to embrace technology and service innovations. NGMN Partners and key players of the industry will share insights while start-up companies and research organisations present innovations and visions.

For group discounts & more information about the event contact ice2012@ngmn.org or visit the Web site. Let them know we sent you!

Posted at 5:41 PM | Link to this article