Operator giants: Innovation to drive future growth

Yesterday’s opening keynote session of the Mobile Asia Congress saw three of the world’s biggest mobile operators cite innovation as the key enabler of a successful mobile business.

Wang Jianzhou, Chairman and CEO of China Mobile, Masao Nakamura, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo and Manoj Kohli, President and CEO of India’s Bharti Airtel, represent the largest, most advanced and fastest growing mobile markets in the world, respectively. And although each country is in a very different stage in the development of mobile communications, the overriding message of each operator was the same – the need to innovate.

“The challenge is not just the technology but also the business model,” said Wang Jianzhou. “We can keep operators at the heart of the value chain because we have the customers. We must innovate though.”

Jianzhou stressed the need for the ongoing development and delivery of new content designed specifically for the mobile. This approach has already led to revenue from mobile music services in the country exceeding the total revenue from the traditional music industry.

For NTT DoCoMo, with 80 per cent of subscribers now migrated to 3G, the emphasis is on the development of ‘Super 3G’ – or LTE – with commercial deployments targeted from 2010, as reported in yesterday’s Show Daily. In addition, Masao Nakamura highlighted his company’s intention to “transfer telecommunications infrastructure into a lifestyle infrastructure,” whereby the mobile phone is both a communications tool and a lifestyle tool.

Meanwhile the President and CEO of Bharti Airtel – the world’s third largest operator in terms of mobile subscribers in a country with only 18% mobile penetration –

spoke of the importance of adapting and extending its successful outsourcing business model. The operator hopes this model will enable it to connect 700 million people in rural India.

“This week sees the 12^th anniversary of Bharti,” said Kohli. “When we started we had no capital, no brand, no technology. We have proved you don’t need deep pockets to be successful, you need entrepreneurial spirit and employee and partner passion.”

The perceived threat of ‘over the top’ services from the likes of Google and Yahoo! was also put to the panel for comment. “We believe these are complementary to our services,” said Kohli.

Jianzhou concurred, taking the opportunity to comment on recent industry developments that have seen handsets and services locked to particular operators. “As an operator we need to provide the innovation. We don’t like the SIM-locked service approach. One of the most important advantages of GSM is openness. This is very important to promote the business.”