Our latest adjacent market case study analyses Axel Springer’s successful 10 year digital transformation from print to online publisher, and holds many lessons for telcos, not least of which are the pitfalls of under commitment, and the required level of investment in M&A.
The Consumer Internet of Things (IoT) market could be huge, but hasn’t yet taken off. We look at why, analysing leading telcos’ and others strategies to date (including DTAG, Orange, and Telefonica), and outline a strategy for how telcos could play a major role by solving some of the key problems.
We outline three potential roles for telcos in the IoT, describing twelve potential application areas and forty use cases, as well as the structure and trends driving change. Looking beyond this we ask which market areas are most attractive, and what should telcos do within them?
Some telcos are hoping that mobile data growth will resurge and transform their fortunes, though STL Partners has previously argued that data growth will not be enough. In this report we re-examine this argument looking at global trends and present the insights and lessons from six operator case-studies including DNA Finland, T-Mobile US and Reliance Jio.
VoLTE solves the complex problem of providing voice services over a 4G mobile data network. Although it may allow 2G and 3G networks to be turned off, and their spectrum re-farmed to other networks, declining call revenues (and in some cases declining volumes) are dampening appetite to invest in VoLTE. However, with voice beyond telephony on the rise, for example through AI-powered voice assistants and video calling, can telcos use VoLTE as an opportunity to develop new IP-based voice and messaging communications offerings?
The rapid growth of Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat and other Internet-based services has prompted some commentators to write off telcos in the consumer communications market. But many mobile operators retain surprisingly large voice and messaging businesses and still have several strategic options. Indeed, there is much telcos can learn from the leading Internet players’ evolving communications propositions and their attempts to integrate them into broad commerce and content platforms. In this report we examine what opportunities still exist for telcos in this strategically important sector.