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One
important prediction of inCode is that mobile
service quality will continue to deteriorate
for the eighth year in a row. Even with
the 3G technology, there will be more dropped
calls, poorer quality calls and more failed
call set-ups for the user. Thus, there will
be a growing market for more robust phones
with a single band, fewer features and longer
battery life for people who are dependent
on a reliable phone service.
The
2008 top 10 predictions for the global wireless
market are:
- RF
technology convergence will finally start
to materialise. The battle between LTE,
HSPA and WiMAX will not occur since the
three technologies are in very different
stages of maturity.
- A
new wholesale carrier will be born. The
700MHz spectrum auction in the US will
present a large opportunity for the emergence
of a new wholesale carrier that focuses
on being the most cost-effective player
while avoiding the retail game. The wholesale
carrier model will be driven by companies
such as Google and will operate at a lower
cost per minute.
- Open
access and strong competition in the chipset
industry will push device and handset
vendors to bypass carriers and build closer
ties with the end user.
- Quality
of service differentiation begins this
year. Service stacking and quality will
become very important. When the number
of players decreases, options on offerings
increase - and carriers will change focus
from expanding the network to optimising
the customer experience.
- Wireless
broadband is more about speed than mobility.
It will continue to be the fastest-growing
service since prepaid and SMS. Customers
love it, but since it is priced and sold
as a DSL service, there is very little
focus on the strength of the cellular
technology. Next year will be a breakthrough
for broadband - HSPA will be the dominant
technology in this space until LTE is
commercially viable, and it will be increasingly
embedded in laptops while WiMAX will be
embedded in certain consumer devices.
This trend will also boost the laptop
market as they will be better connected
than ever before.
- P2P
- from theft model to business model.
Long used for pirating files, US distributors
follow the UK's lead and begin to utilise
next-generation, secure and DRM-protected
P2P for content distribution. Media delivered
via IP/Internet/broadband will completely
blow apart the walled garden relationships
created over the years.
- In-building
will play a large part in carriers' strategy
to fill in coverage gaps, driving increased
return on investment (ROI) for enterprises
and average revenue per user (ARPU) for
carriers. Carriers will follow an 'inside
out' strategy, enabling coverage that
focuses on where the most lucrative customers
are, instead of blindly blanketing a city
with coverage.
- As
the carriers roll out 3G infrastructure
and continue to introduce bandwidth-intensive
data service offerings, the backhaul portion
of their networks must be optimised and/or
upgraded to ensure that the service quality
is not compromised.
- Mobile
advertising gains steam. Advertising will
become a significant event, sponsoring
content and driving innovation - so much
so that carriers will no longer look at
their business cases on a strictly subscription
basis.
- Mobile
device security. The significance and
sensitivity of data on devices will continue
to rise with awareness of and need for
mobile device security. This will therefore
create and drive a new market for mobile
device security software as well as mobile
device management software and services.
These
predictions are being designed every year
by inCode since 2003 to help wireless industry
players, partners and consumers better plan
for the coming year. VeriSign claims that
inCode's predictions have proved more than
80 per cent accurate.
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