In the Digital Age, it is no longer good enough to produce a product or service that people want. Today, you must be all things to all people all of the time.
The old adage of doing one thing and doing it well is not good enough for many of the manufacturers that want to dominate in this new wireless telecom world, simply because everything is changing too fast. A good product today may be outdated tomorrow. It’s better to be everywhere and have your hand in everything just in case something works out.
The same holds true for carriers. A wireless carrier no longer can count on success just by offering plain old voice service. No, today a wireless carrier must also be an all-around communications provider, a one-stop shop. Carriers must be able to offer data, long-distance and ISP services. People are busy. They want their solution bundled. Now.
As Credit Suisse First Boston asks in its advertising campaign, “Is it possible to specialize in things that haven’t happened yet?” (Despite their bravado, I would answer no.) Still, telecom companies are under pressure to be everywhere.
Those with deep pockets are investing outside of their traditional areas because who knows what the next Big Thing will be, so we see Aether Systems Inc. building a little kingdom, acquisition by acquisition. Motorola Inc., known for wireless infrastructure and handsets, last week announced a joint research and development effort with Portal Software to study wireless Internet billing. Motorola as a billing company? Why not, Lucent is.
(Actually, Motorola has a history of getting into areas outside its typical purview to help grow markets.)
All of the big infrastructure players are going after the wireless broadband market as well as the wireless Internet market because there is so much potential for those markets to explode. And I imagine it is only a matter of time before smaller companies with good technology in those areas will be bought by the big players.
In joining the WAP Forum, Microsoft conceded to the just-in-case strategy. The software giant had been wishy-washy about WAP technology, leaving the impression Microsoft was holding out for something better (its own solution, perhaps), but since WAP applications took off, Microsoft joined the effort, just in case.
The just-in-case strategy makes sense today because everything is still being sorted out on this IP journey. Next year, we’ll be writing a lot of stories on companies getting rid of this division or that unit because it no longer fits its key strategy.
