Which innovations are driving mobile operators’ strategies for the future in Europe?

Dataxis has just hosted the first edition of Next Mobile Europe, welcoming 30 speakers from all around the European mobile industry. They provided in-depth insights into their commercial strategies, technical achievements, upcoming challenges and market innovations. So what are key insights that we could take from the successive panels of the event? Competition from new entrants: who will come to challenge mobile operators in the upcoming years? If Europe already counts more than 80 active groups operating mobile networks, across 185 national entities, the market isn’t likely to be less fragmented in the upcoming years as regular waves of new entrants are moving into this space. New actors offering mobile connectivity vary depending on their existing businesses and positioning strategies. Speakers mentioned several cases like energy companies increasing their presence in the market and offering very attractive plans, as they can price connectivity in a bundle with other household utilities. New entrants are also rapidly expanding towards niche positions, capitalizing on their light and flexible organizations to offer new services in international connectivity or in the IoT spaces, to quote a few examples. As legacy operators are much larger entities, they often need more time to be able to jump on new business opportunities and adjust their propositions while challengers become threatening market disruptors in those new spaces. Digital-only mobile brands are also coming onto the market, with little to no costs on sales and logistics, often relying on the rapid expansion of eSIMs. Telcos are also looking at digital-first branding as a way to reduce their cost structure, digitalize back-end services, and better address an online audience. At the moment, this proposition remains complementary to a strong retail presence, as a large part of end customers remain more conservative and prefer human contact and physical shops in markets like the Baltics or the Balkans. The focus set by new entrants on lighter structures and digital services has been largely articulating the strategies of 4th MNOs, who greatly disrupted their national markets like Free in France or SWAN in Slovakia. The latter achieved a 10% market share just 8 years after launch, having eaten away legacy MNOs’ market shares by offering unlimited data packages at a very affordable price, and greatly participating in the significant decrease of consumer prices in the national mobile market. From left to right: Monique van Dusseldorp - Monika Majstorović - Patrik Kollaroci - Mindaugas Rauba Virtual operators were also part of the discussions, and strategies for building relevant market propositions are at the heart of their commercial approach. Being challengers, they had to find a gap in their market and stick to it to have a differentiating market positioning. The speakers illustrated different MVNOs’ strategies:...