The global mobile market is facing a time of great change, challenges and opportunities, which many predict will intensify in the year ahead. As described by Chetan Sharma, the 4th wave of digital services, beyond voice, text messaging and data access is the enabler for new models, which will capitalize on advanced technologies and capabilities.
Our focus for 2016 is on capitalizing on network reach optimization and performance and on advanced analytics to harvest new emerging digital services, such as Voice over LTE, connected car and new monetization models.
Although consumer demand for mobile data is tremendous, consumers may not be willing to pay much more. As a result, operator revenues for mobile data are forecast to significantly lag behind traffic volume growth. According to a McKinsey study, while mobile data traffic has increased 40X from 2008 to 2013, the revenues associated with it have barely tripled. Operators are looking for ways to create sustainable business models. As a result, Sponsored Data is emerging as a potential new model in some markets. With an entity other than the end-user paying for some portion of the mobile data use, it could be a solution to increase revenue from increased mobile data traffic and also a way to increase consumer stickiness.
I’m looking forward to attending MWC 2016, and I hope to have an opportunity to discuss further the implications of the new digital services wave, such as this new business model, along with our expanding role in international VoLTE deployments and our recent success in the M2M connected car market.