Opinion
As Big Tech’s old guard bows out, a new age of conglomerates is born
When looking at any timeline’s history, you will find a turning point along its development; either it propels the timeline into the next frontier or brings it to a screeching halt.
Modern technology’s explosion into the data age was set in 2007. A year that set the tone for generations to come, birthing giants, affecting masses, and changing the dynamics of society as we know it.
Look back to a random day during 2007, some people are peaking at their MySpace pages, while others discover and experiment with something called Facebook – which had just hit 20 million users. Chitchat between you and friends on MSN Messenger discussed rumors that then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be looking to release a game-changing new phone.
You start to notice that a two-year-old platform called YouTube is beginning to take up a lot of your time, but you shrug it off and focus on the release of the new PlayStation 3 – this is before the great Adpocalypse was upon us, of course.
Information and data have just started to explode, with people looking to place more of themselves onto the internet, an idea enticed by the emergence of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, pushing communication methods onto the forefront of consumer electronics and outlets.
According to a report by Nielsen, during the year 2000, U.S. citizens were sending an average of 35 texts per month; that number spiked to 218 readers during 2007 and was recorded as the first time in human history that we were sending texts more than making phone calls.
These changes have shaped how we conduct business and manage our daily lives and touched every fabric of human society, creating and destroying industries as time passed.
The leaders behind these innovations have had a profound effect on our lives, and we’ve sat back and watched these startups as they grew into trillion-dollar companies, testified in front of the world’s authorities, bring game-changing products to market while acquiring some of their competitors along the way.
“2007, I believe will be seen in time as the single greatest technological inflection point since Guttenberg invented the printing press,” said Thomas Friedman, New York Times financial columnist and best-selling author, in his keynote at IBM’s World of Watson this October.
These tech leaders have lived with us for almost a decade and a half, bloating their offering from a single service or product to an entire ecosystem of industries.
Birthing giants
Amazon, for example, has become an all-purpose company, operating online and bricks-and-mortar retail stores, sells outsourced computing services, runs a global logistics operation, produces movies, provides a social network built on streaming, dominates smart speakers, peddles home security services, aims to launch a satellite network, provides healthcare services, and last year acquired Zoox, a self-driving car company.
And that is just one of many.
The retail giant’s founder and former chief exec Jeff Bezos bowed out from Amazon earlier on July 5th; exactly, 27 years after founding the company in 1994. Bezos left the reins to head Amazon Web Services (AWS), Andy Jassy.
Under the founder’s leadership, the company thrived when the dot-com bubble bursted in the late 90s, reaching the forefront of the retail industry in both U.S. and EU markets.
Fast-forward 14 years later, and these same founders are bowing out one-by-one, either by sharing control, stepping down, pushed out, pivoting into other technological opportunities, or focusing on their philanthropy – or if you’re anything like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seize complete control over his company until he transforms into a terminator.
But while the second richest man in the world has dived into his philanthropy via his Bezos Day One Fund – which aims to establish a network of nonprofit preschools and aid organizations working with homeless people – his focus shifted on space tourism through his Blue Origin aerospace company, fighting off other giants such as British business magnate Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
The trillion-dollar incumbent
Another company that will be on the lookout for a new chief exec is Apple.
In August 2011, Apple’s visionary co-founder Steve Jobs resigned as CEO, handing the keys to one of the most valuable brands in the world to his protégé Tim Cook; six weeks later, Jobs died.
On the 10th anniversary of his rule over the iPhone maker, Cook hinted that he would step down sometime after 2025, a revelation justified by Bloomberg, who reported that Apple and Cook have a pay deal that runs out in 2025.
Cook’s Apple indeed underwent a golden age, allowing the company to grow more valuable than oil. He turned the business into a flurry of premium products and services, with the iPhone acting as the key to the sharply minted smart ecosystem.
But while Apple reached financial heights unlike any ever seen in the tech industry, one thing will be remembered of Cook’s reign: it wasn’t flashy. No game-changing products and no disruption on a hardware scale, just fine-tuning the iPhone, wearables, and an emphasis on an ecosystem of services and applications.
However, the main question that looms over Apple’s future after Cook takes a knee will be whether the company will look to maintain its focus on being a services business or repivot back into what put them on the map from the start: hardware.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is looking to unveil a head-mounted device with the potential of becoming as groundbreaking as the iPhone – which means that Apple is taking the fight directly to Meta Platforms’ frontline of its metaverse deep dive.
While 2022 is around the corner and is far from the 2025 rumored deadline of Cook’s departure as chief executive, many consider that he is laying the same groundwork for his successor to build on as Steve Jobs did for him with the iPhone.
From media to finance
On a more recent take, Twitter has been added to the list of founders that have moved on to other technological endeavors after announcing last week that he would be handing the keys to his microblogging empire to company CTO Parag Agrawal.
We’ve seen Dorsey steer the Twitter ship for almost a decade, dealing with everything from a misinformation outbreak to permanently booting Former U.S. President Donald Trump from the app following the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building in Washington.
The now-former social media chief has geared himself up to place his entire focus on his financial services company, Block Inc. – formerly known as Square Inc. as of December 1, 2021. Many critics have associated the name change as a nod to Dorsey’s fascination and interest in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain it operates on.
Block will become the name of the “corporate entity,” with Square continuing to be the company’s segment that helps people and businesses process payments, the company said in a news release.
Many have interpreted Dorsey’s departure as a fresh start into an industry that shies away from placing him on the testifying stand to defend his platform’s role in spreading misinformation, a reoccurring event for the past few years.
Passing of the corporate torch
Many other examples highlight the end of Big Tech’s first-generation guard, notably Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who has chosen to go down the philanthropic path with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Others, such as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have decided to remain off the radar by merely remaining on as board members with controlling shares in the company, handing the keys to the search giant to current CEO Sundar Pichai.
But winds of change of this magnitude translate into an entryway of another era of innovation. The entry of Big Tech’s new guard of chieftains was signaled by the slow death of the sprawling industrial conglomerates such as GE, Toshiba, Johnson & Johnson, DowDuPont Inc., and several others when they announced dividing up their units into public entities.
But as a business life cycle dwindles, another one takes on the mantle; the biggest companies on the planet look incredibly different from their predecessors. While GE was splitting its entities, Big Tech’s five companies expanded into other industries, services, hardware, software, and even universes.
The corporate passing of the torch has reached Big Tech, and it looks as though the leaders that will be ushering us into the new technological bubble are slowly being given their shot at steering the ship.
However, this shake-up in leadership reflects that Big Tech’s old guard has scaled and grown their respective businesses to the full extent of their abilities and is pushing to place the right people at the center of next-generation tech that will come along with it.
This is not an indication that these businesses have reached their peak, far from it, in fact. Still, there is an emphatic belief throughout Silicon Valley to groom a new breed of tech leaders, innovators, and visionaries to manage these companies corporately and keep the growth coming.
These main aim behind the pivot in leadership could be explain from different standpoints.
On one hand, tech companies have set more ambitious and tech-savvy goals for the coming decade, with the metaverse at the heart of it. Big Tech understands that what is required for the job ahead is a fresh start, as the key to the next digital frontier would be through wearables, and not through smartphones.
Smartphones will still have a role to play, but as the decade passes on, they will have to give up their mantel and limelight to other hardware technologies such as smart glasses, Meta’s sensory glove, and headsets to integrate artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual realities.
On the other hand, lies the policy and regulation side, where CEOs like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Dorsey, and others have been scrutinized by the U.S. authorities and media, with whistleblowers taking the forefront.
Thus, these newly minted Big Tech leaders have a mountain to climb from every area, but the responsibility laid at their feet will affect our relationship with consumer technology for the foreseeable future.
Feeling the Pinch?
The rising cost of living is difficult to avoid. April 2022 saw food prices increase by 6.7 per cent, the highest petrol prices on record and inflation rise to a staggering nine per cent. As millions of customers see their mobile tariffs soar, Ross Slogrove, UK country manager at cloud calling specialist Ringover reveals his advice for avoiding the price hike.
From July 1, 2022, Virgin Media will hit its 3 million customers with a price hike of 1.5 per cent. So, if a customer signed up to, let’s say, a £30-a-month tariff after May 5, 2022, they will pay an additional 45 pence each month. EE has already increased its prices by 2.7 per cent each year — or £11.30 if you have a £35-a-month contract — while O2, Three and Vodafone are all increasing by 2.5 per cent.
Pay-as-you-go prices are also taking a hit. From July 2022, call costs with Three will jump from 10p to 35p per minute. The cost of sending a text will double, affecting the 14 per cent of Brits that use a pre-pay mobile.
Given Brits are already battling with price hikes from every angle, these costs mount up. 45 per cent of UK households have at least two mobile phones, while according to Ofcom, just two per cent don’t have one at all. And then there’s the toll on businesses, with many still relying on mobile packages to keep employees connected.
Take a Hike
When a mobile contract comes to an end, it’s common for that tariff to be rolled onto a monthly rolling contract at the same price, even though the customer has paid off their handset. Research from Which? shows that customers who allow their mobile phone contracts to roll over without enquiring about better deals could lose up to £100 a year.
Ditching a contract mid-term and without penalties isn’t possible. However, consumers should evaluate whether their minimum contract period has ended if they’re considering switching. If a customer was on a standard 24-month contract that’s rolled on after this, they’re probably over-paying and need to negotiate a better deal.
Claiming that mobile phone networks overcharged UK businesses and consumers by £7.6 million last year, BillMonitor can provide analysis into the best mobile tariffs for your needs. Money Saving Expert has an easy-to-use price comparison tool, too.
Ditch the Big Guys
Some research into mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) may also be worthwhile. Unlike the “Big Four” mobile network operators (MNOs) in the UK, MVNOs do not own their own wireless infrastructure, so use radio networks operated by EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. They include the likes of Giffgaff,Tesco Mobile and Sky.
In Which?’s Annual Mobile Network Survey of the best perceived mobile operators, O2, EE, Vodafone and Three were outperformed by MVNOs. Three fared poorly in the customer survey, receiving the lowest rating for network reliability with customers unimpressed by its technical support.
In contrast, virtual networks Smarty and iD, which both use Three’s infrastructure, were among the highest scorers in Which?’s table with customers applauding the networks’ value for money. Three of the highest scoring carriers in Which?’s survey were Giffgaff, Tesco and Sky, which all use O2’s infrastructure.
Head to the Cloud
Shopping around and switching providers will save consumers from the Big Four’s price hikes, but what about businesses? It may be best for them to ditch traditional telephony altogether.
There are currently 4.98 million business landline numbers in use, according to Ofcom figures. However, this is expected to drop below 2 million by 2024, from a high of 8 million in 2013. With the switch off of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) imminent, businesses that rely heavily on calling should consider an internet-based alternative.
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is often a cheaper alternative to traditional telephony. While a traditional landline phone system sends voice communications via an analogue PBX system, VoIP phone systems transmit voice calls over the internet as data packets to bring voice and data capabilities together on a single network, eliminating the need for separate lines and providers for each.
A company using a VoIP service doesn’t need to work with multiple service providers for its office, mobile, and data services, IT support is reduced and hardware and installation needs are condensed. Furthermore, because users are no longer tied down to a particular country, address or phoneline for their communications, companies can save on the cost of international charges.
With the cost of living rising, price hikes are difficult to avoid. However, consumers must check in on their current mobile contracts or they risk losing money. For businesses, it’s time to move on from the landline and onto more cost-effective, future-proofed alternatives.
About Ringover
A leader in cloud communications, Ringover seamlessly combines unlimited calling, group messaging and video conferencing into one easy-to-use app. No expertise is needed to set up and integrates with your CRM or helpdesk tools. Within a few clicks, you’ve gained access to all the data you need to enhance your call centre or sales team’s performance and boost customer engagement.
Big Tech’s entry into telecoms is shaking up the industry
2021 was a huge year for tech giants and telecoms with Google, Verizon and most recently Amazon Web Services (AWS) all announcing plans to enter the telecoms space. The convergence of Big Tech telecoms is nothing new and each company has their own plans to disrupt the current landscape for the better. But is this disruption a dream or disaster for telcos? Here, Hamish White, CEO of digital-first telecom software provider Mobilise, navigates the benefits and drawbacks of the growing tech-telecom convergence.
Despite seeming similar, in many ways telecoms and Big Tech are polar opposites. While Big Tech tends to position itself at the forefront of innovation, paving the way for new upcoming capabilities, the telecoms industry tends to stick to its traditional but stable principles and ways of working. But could a unification be just what’s needed?
Better Together
Big Tech’s entry into telecoms has a wealth of potential for service providers (SPs) and their customers. Big Tech has what many providers are lacking — the resources, financial resources and culture to accelerate the pace of innovation of the telecoms industry by applying a Big Tech approach product development and improvement. Big Tech brings its own way of innovating to the market, resulting in quicker, better products and services that smaller providers can tap into too.
This has a positive knock-on effect on consumers, who ultimately receive a better experience from their SP. Through their advance data management techniques, Big Tech has the potential to gather, organise and present more customer data from various sources. The more a SP knows about its customer, the greater the level of personalisation they can offer. A greater level of personalisation leads to more relevant marketing, great customer satisfaction and increased customer lifetime value (CLV) for the SP. A win-win for both the SP and the customer.
Personalisation is complicated to deliver, often requiring significant investment on new technology and involvement from stakeholders across the business. As a result, smaller and medium-sized providers often cannot offer personalisation services on par with Big Tech or Tier 1 SPs, leaving them uncompetitive and missing out entirely on new opportunities.
With the help of Mobilise’s HERO platform, small and medium-sized SPs can now deliver personalisation on par with industry leaders. This is because they have access to all customer data needed for such services through one central location which also houses an orchestration layer which acts as a single entry point between interconnected systems in order to capture the data required for hyperpersonalisation.
Fair Share
Despite the potential benefits that Big Tech could bring to the telecoms market, there’s also shared concerns from mobile operators all over the world. SPs’ ongoing dissatisfaction with Big Tech’s lack of investment into the physical telecommunications infrastructure has been documented publicly.
In December 2021, the Financial Times published an open letter from Europe’s 13 biggest SPs addressing tech giants to demand a greater contribution to network investment. Why is this so crucial?
Data from Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report revealed the top six tech firms are generating over 56 per cent of global network traffic. Their entire business model and profitability relies on the infrastructure funded by SPs, but despite their successes, they’re still not contributing investment that is commensurate with the gains they’ve reaped.
What’s more, telecoms’ frustration with Big Tech’s lack of infrastructural investment is without even considering the latest layer of the problem: Big Tech’s attempt to launch products and services that directly compete with SPs.
A Market Monopoly
Several tech giants are developing or already have developed telecoms business areas. There’s concern from regulators, SPs and consumers that if Big Tech’s expansion continues, they could monopolise the entire technology sphere.
From a SP’s perspective, monopolisation has already begun. AWS and Microsoft have both acquired SAS-SM accreditation, required for the cloud deployment of one of telecoms’ latest development: eSIMs. eSIMs allow SPs to onboard subscribers remotely, virtually performing the traditional functions of a physical SIM card, directly provisioning a device over the internet.
While the intentions behind AWS and Microsoft’s acquisition of this accreditation are unclear now, it’s possibly linked to the development of eSIMs for Internet of Things (IoT) use cases covering sectors like manufacturing and supply chains, where their use improves operational efficiency.
While Big Tech is free to do this, and has the technology and resources to develop products quickly, this approach of cherry picking certain areas of the telecoms network could negatively affect the industry.
Double-Edged Sword
The implications of Big Tech’s lack of infrastructural investment is concerning. Currently, SPs are entirely responsible for the physical infrastructure that keeps our modern digital societies connected. But as of yet, Big Tech’s shown no interest in supporting this activity.
If Big Tech continues to only cherry pick certain elements of telecoms it wishes to enter, it could jeopardise the revenue SPs can make from their products and services, reducing investment availability, which could then place the critical infrastructure under threat.
There’s buzz from regulators and consumers around the impact of Big Tech’s potentially anti-competitive app store practices. In the US, in February 2022 the Senate passed the Open App Markets Act, which seeks to remove the control of Apple and Google over their app stores, creating a more accessible and diverse market. Similarly, in the EU, in October 2022 the Digital Markets Act will be adopted, banning practices used by Big Tech to gatekeep information and encourage competition.
While these steps promote consumer choice and a fair market, regulators also must consider how Big Tech’s partial entry into telecoms could have a detrimental impact on infrastructure development. The juxtaposition we see is that Big Tech could provide much needed innovation to the telecoms industry, but the infrastructure required to support this innovation won’t exist. Mobilise offers a suite of advisory services, including strategy and regulatory policy consultancy, to assist SPs and regulators in navigating these uncertain times and to see Big Tech as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The tech-telecom convergence will undoubtedly shake up the market. But more consideration needs to be taken to ensure infrastructure investment remains stable and the market remains competitive.
About Mobilise
Mobilise is a leading provider of SaaS solutions to the telecommunications industry. Focused on delivering highly engaging digital-first service propositions with excellent customer experience, Mobilise has a proven track record, deep industry knowledge and a team of specialists to support clients to building and executing transformational strategies.
Clients range from large corporate organisations with over 100,000 employees to small enterprises with under 20 employees. Mobilise has a deep knowledge of the telecoms business model and our experience includes working with over 40 service providers across eight markets for brands including Virgin, Dixon’s Carphone, Red Bull Mobile, Manx Telecom and Freenet.
A seamless UX enabler
In its Top 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022 report, Mulesoft claimed the 2020s as the era of seamless digital experiences, enabled by modular software design. All more often, consumers are expecting the same quality of user experience (UX) from their service provider (SP) as they receive from tech giants like Amazon and Meta. Here, Hamish White, founder and CEO of telecoms SaaS solution provider Mobilise explains how a composable business model and a modular API-led connectivity architecture is an SP’s best friend.
Organisations that have adopted innovation must not just be able to use it, but use it well enough to deliver a seamless digital UX. Consumers expect the same highly engaging experience from every single brand they interact with, so smaller SPs must offer a UX that’s on a par with tech giants to remain competitive and keep their customers happy.
Offering digital services is essential in our modern digital society. A consistent, intuitive user interface is a core differentiator for SPs seeking a competitive edge, contributing to a positive CX and ultimately preventing churn. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Future of CX report, 32 per cent of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they once loved after just one bad experience. So, a positive UX right from the start is crucial.
APIs Enter the Chat
In today’s digital society, data is king. But despite the widespread recognition of its power, most organisations don’t have a comprehensive data strategy in place. According to Capgemini’s Master the customer experiencereport just 21 per cent of brands have an integrated, holistic view of all customer information. For the others, data is scattered in silos in incompatible formats, and in some cases it’s not even captured and stored. But APIs help to solve these issues.
API-led connectivity links data to applications through application programming interfaces (APIs). It decouples data from the business logic and experience layer to create functions specifically with CX in mind. APIs are developed for specific purposes, but once created, they are reusable. So, adopting an API-led connectivity model allows an organisation to create ecosystems of applications that are modular, purposeful and reusable, enabling businesses to operate with more agility.
Elevating CX
Implementing API integrations, or an orchestration layer, into an organization’s digital infrastructure supports digital CX in many ways. APIs enable the full integration of external systems and third-party services so that processes appear seamless. What is actually a sequence of several individual processes and triggers behind the scenes, enabled through applications from several vendors, can appear as single interaction to a customer.
For example, in telecoms, when onboarding a new customer through an in-app eSIM subscription, subscriber provisioning, stock management and Know Your Customer (KYC) is all handled by APIs. Yet for the customer, all that’s required is the tap of a button.
For smaller SPs, having the resources and expertise to successfully implementing a API-led digital architecture may seem an impossible task. Mobilise’s HERO is a digital BSS platform that enables SPs to deliver digital-first customer experience. Through its orchestration layer, which is fully compliant with the TM Forum Open API Specifications, there are over 60 APIs available to integrate into front and back-end systems, for functions including self-service, eSIM provisioning, payments, in-app push notifications, marketplace for cross selling, and user profiles maintenance.
Preventing churn, maintaining satisfied customers and elevating CX is essential to success in the ever more competitive telecoms space. Creating a consistent, intuitive digital ecosystem, powered by APIs gives SPs the ongoing flexibility to adapt and keep pace with innovation.
About Mobilise
Mobilise is a leading provider of SaaS solutions to the telecommunications industry. Focused on delivering highly engaging digital-first service propositions with excellent customer experience, Mobilise has a proven track record, deep industry knowledge and a team of specialists to support clients to building and executing transformational strategies.
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Ian Terblanche, Global Strategic Sales & Channel Director at Sigfox
