The evolution of mobile industry : modular to integral

Abstract

This thesis explores the dynamics of the mobile industry in the US. One in every four Americans owns a smart phone. Smart phones are fuelling the growth of the mobile web and an ecosystem of mobile applications. As innovative applications and services capture the marketplace, which factors ensure greater user adoption is essential to building attractive services. Despite innovation in network technology and billions of dollars invested in evolving into newer generations of technology, providing high capacity, low latency and high availability, the mobile network is fast becoming a medium to supply mobile services and is losing the capacity to distinguish itself based on network features. Many are of the opinion that the network itself is getting commoditized. The rapid growth in the mobile industry has led to evolution in the industry value chain. This thesis addresses the following questions: 1) What makes a product/ service on the mobile platform attractive for users to adopt them? 2) What has led to commoditization of mobile network? 3) How has the nature of the industry evolved? By employing systems tools like stakeholder theory, gear model (value chain mapping) and system dynamics, the nature of the mobile industry is studied. Various stakeholders and components in the value chain are identified to understand what their individual needs are and how are they met. The thesis conclusions are supported by conducting research from academic journals, market reports and online journals/ blogs.