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| Super Providers |
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We foresee that IT, Telco, Media and Financial businesses will converge to form units we have chosen to call Super Providers. Each area of business is looking to meet the strategic challenges of operating in an increasingly dynamic market where traditional boundaries have been dissolved. Each area of business provides specialised services, and they share the objective of developing, maintaining and optimising customer relations. To do this they will each be dependent on one or several of the other areas of business:
Telco will be dependent on both Media and Finance to develop and deliver content, and handle payment services.
Media has realised the enormous potential in delivering cross-platform content. In order to be able to distribute these products they will be dependent on partnerships with Telco companies.
Finance will increasingly have to view Telco companies as their primary competitors. In order to meet this challenge, they must look to form strategic alliances with Telco companies.
It is not enough for any of these three businesses to consider creating ‘strategic overlaps’. The scenario, as we see it, points towards a complete integration of two or more businesses into Super Providers for the Mobile Internet.
In Europe two out of seven consortiums already contain a combination of Telco and Media businesses. Internationally, the alliance between Yahoo and AOL/Time Warner is another example of Super Providers in the making.
Historically the convergence of different businesses has proven a slow and evolutionary process, that took place over an extended period of time. However, the kind of converging process that we are witnessing today is a both sudden and spontaneous development of new structures. It is this process which is giving rise to the Super Providers.
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