Wireless Horizon: Strategy and Competition in the Worldwide Mobile Marketplace

Citation

Sterling, C. (2003), "Wireless Horizon: Strategy and Competition in the Worldwide Mobile Marketplace", info, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 51-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636690310480207

This fascinating and information‐packed volume is “designed to serve as a managerial roadmap for industry practitioners, policy authorities, technology observers, trade specialists, investment analysts, market researchers and general business readers in the United States and worldwide.” That is a pretty broad claim, but author Dan Steinbock, a New York‐based academic and consultant, whose most recent book is The Nokia Revolution (Amacom, 2001), more than fulfills it in a work valuable for its clear international and comparative tone – he describes a realistically global industry. The vast amount of information he offers is carefully arranged into four main sections.

The first, “Quest for [a] wireless horizon”, offers two chapters, one on the drivers of globalization, and the other concerning the globalization of technology innovation. With useful historical background and effective use of maps, the author demonstrates the changing number of technical standards in use around the world with the developing generations of mobile communication. What makes Steinbock’s book especially interesting is its broad use of historical background to provide context for what is happening today. He draws useful theoretical constructs as well – not something involved and purely academic – but rather some concepts that are readily grasped and help to provide structure to what follows.

Part two offers five chapters on “Network operators: from national monopolies to market liberalization”. The arrangement here is essentially chronological, tracing the story from the pre‐cellular mobile radio networks used by very few (at high cost), through each of the later generations (1G, 2G, etc.). While the Detroit police department made some use of radio for dispatch as early as 1921, Bell Labs may have developed the first “truly mobile radiotelephone” in 1924. Chicago police had a two‐way radio system by the early 1930s. The first commercial system was introduced in St Louis in 1946, used FM technology, was connected to landline telephone carriers and was soon in use in 25 cities. An improved version was introduced in the 1960s. But perceived as a service only for the elite few (mobile equipment cost upwards of $2,500), the service suffered a lack of spectrum as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) favored mass‐appeal broadcasting. Steinbock makes clear that American firms (especially Motorola, which had begun with car radios back in the 1930s) dominated the field. So did international sales for such companies, the export part of Motorola’s sales mounting from 26 percent in 1983 (just a year into analog cellular service in the USA) to 52 per cent by 2000.

The first cellular telephone system appeared in Bahrain, beating American marketing experiments by two months in 1978. But with 2G (digital) cellular services, Europe agreed (in the early 1990s) on a mandate to use only GSM, while American firms struggled with several competing standards and have steadily lost headway. Steinbock describes how this “Euro‐Nordic” model and Finland’s “wireless valley” began to dominate world mobile developments just as monopoly PTT structures were breaking up. In turn, the Nordic leadership faded with the early transition to 3G services. Steinbock describes the dramatic changes in Japan, which laid the groundwork for that nation – and specifically for NTT’s DoCoMo – to take the global mobile lead over the past year or so. Looking ahead to 4G services, he describes the experience of several firms in the Chinese market, and considers the potential of “the China card” as a further driver for change.

Part three reviews “Industry catalysts: from equipment manufacturers to enablers”. Here the chapters profile the development, problems, and options of specific manufacturers. Motorola’s “failure of success” describes how the once leading American company failed to maintain its cutting edge in research and development, and thus fell behind. Ericsson and Nokia are seen as central to the Nordic leadership in the digital business – both are profiled as key exporters. Qualcomm is a much newer firm (founded only in 1985, well into the 1G era), and focused on developing the CDMA technology for the digital cellular industry. Another chapter turns to some of the contractors who supply products to larger firms and have been transformed from mere “board stuffers” in the 1970s, to original design electronic manufacturing services by the 1990s. Finally, Steinbock discusses how old integrated firms have become modern information technology enablers. All of these chapters take into account the meltdown of recent years, but project the future (up to 2010) market for multimedia and related 3G services. A brief “Epilogue” ties together fundamental issues of geography, strategy, and globalization.

Steinbock crams an amazing amount of textual and graphic information into these pages – this is not your typical American “management” book making a few obvious points using wide‐spaced print. The chapters are well organized and clearly laid out, making excellent use of supportive maps and graphics, all of them developed by the author. Steinbock clearly reads widely and thus is readily able to compare and contrast a variety of researcher conclusions on these pages. If you are buying one book to try and figure out how the mobile communications industry developed and its likely future direction, this is very clearly that book.