Apple is all set to completely blindside Mobile Operators next week with their Watch



Telefonica CEO Stephen Shurrock talks about Wearables on the eve of Apple Watch launch

(on the Wearable opportunity for MNOs) there’s clearly a distribution opportunity whereby these devices are sold alongside smartphones or as add-ons afterwards

Mobile World Congress Daily, Tuesday 3rd March

I remember a few weeks before the launch of the original iPhone in 2007 O2/Telefonica published research showing that the single biggest factor that influenced a consumers choice of new mobile was battery life. The reports publication coincided with the promotion of an O2 branded mobile phone with extra long battery life.

Of course it was obvious the research misread the market as customers flocked to a new sales experience that involved a device that had a terribly short battery life and wasn’t even much good at making the phone calls that mobile operators thought they were in the business of providing.

It 2015 it’s obvious the billions that O2/Telefonica paid to Apple to provide expensive iPhones to their customers contributed to the companies debt mountain that reached €50Billion (by the time the iPad arrived they had completely given up on their subsidy model and while they’d give you a SIM for an iPad the staff in stores would tell customers to go direct to Apple to buy one!).

I get the feeling that next week when Apple starts the waiting list for it’s Watch this article by Consumer CEO Stephen Shurrock on Wearables will be helpful for anyone studying the thinking behind how to completely miss an opportunity that was dangled in front of you.

Despite the millions wasted on the failed O2 Health O2/Telefonica still can’t supply me with a SIM card for my Smoke Alarm and out in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress this week it’s obvious that Mobile Operators are still pretty clueless about the innovation that their networks enable or the revenue share models (eg. how else do you arrive at $9 a week for a SIM that does little more than monitors a door that will be opened twice a year). I’m sure this is why events like the WebSummit in Dublin have exploded onto the scene and grown so quickly. Without the vested interests of $billions of network infrastructure you can think very differently and the conference speakers can be far more interesting when they don’t all have to have interests that are completely ‘on-side’ with those of GSMA members.

Don’t miss these mHealth Insights into Wearables from the inventor of the camera phone (another technology that mobile operators at first ignored because they couldn’t imagine digital photography playing a role in their future) & MMS (by 2010 this had grown into a $30Billion pa industry yet is still only grudgingly tolerated by MNOs).

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