In the telecom industry we are seeing an increasing number of players basing their business on partnerships. Recruiting partners is one thing, making a success of them is entirely another.
In the mobile broadband market, partnerships are about more than ensuring wide distribution, they should help reduce production costs and build a strategic position, ready for the day competition and/or partners are forced to consolidate.
Strand Consult's new report* analyses the changes the mobile broadband market is undergoing in detail, especially the areas fundamental to devising partnership strategy.
We believe that it is important to focus on:
"¢ Infrastructure partners - in a market where capacity is growing faster than demand, a number of infrastructure providers will be forced into some sort of consolidation. This will result in either being able to purchase inexpensive network capacity, or finding one's infrastructure partner bought by a competitor.
"¢ Distribution partners - the broadband market player that has the best partner-based distribution strategy will be in a position to achieve the largest market share. On the other hand, players in this market will always be in a situation where they risk that their partners either moving within the value chain, or being bought out by competing companies.
"¢ Services partners - in future the mobile broadband market's main focus will be on creating value through services and partners that create traffic on the mobile broadband provider's network. In this type of market the question is whether one should focus on exclusive partnerships, or the service market, which is increasingly taken an open (as opposed to walled) garden approach in mobile broadband.
The path to success is very simply analysing the market and focusing on creating partnerships that put players in a strong position in tomorrow's market.
* Successful Strategies in the Mobile Broadband Market, published by Strand Consult