Mobile service platform competition

Mobile service platforms are becoming particularly important as play a significant role in consumers' decisions to accept, adopt and use mobile services and applications. Literature on mobile service platforms focuses mainly on strategic issues in managing multi-sided platforms and economic issues of two sided markets, still literature is highly conceptual and empirical research on the awareness and preferences of consumers is lacking. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research on platforms developed by mobile network operators. By making use of conjoint analysis, 62 Finnish respondents participated in an empirical study. The conjoint analysis results show that application costs and type of operating system are the most important criteria to make a decision and the provider of the service platform is not of the concern. However, consumers value issues such as security and privacy arrangement which are often guaranteed by network operators. Our findings have three suggestions to mobile network operators: (1), they settle for becoming a bit-pipe provider, (2), open their platforms, and (3), let other market competitors such as Apple, Google, Facebook be responsible for providing mobile services and applications

Designing Business Models for Mobile Payment Services

Designing business models for mobile services is a complex undertaking because it requires multiple actors to balance different requirements and interests such that a ‘win-win’ situation is created. A business model can be seen as a blueprint of four interrelated components: service offering, technical architecture, and organizational and financial arrangements. Although little attention has been paid to how these different components are related to one another, this knowledge is needed to enhance our understanding of what constitutes a viable business model. In this paper the connections between two of these components, namely service offering and organizational arrangements, are explored by analyzing the business models of three recent mobile payment initiatives. The cases reveal that similar value elements can be realized in different ways and that, depending on the target group, dominant actors can be bypassed in the value network

Factors influencing the adoption of mobile services consumers' preferences using analytic hierarchy process

The rapid and widespread development of innovations in mobile services is changing societies and improving lives around the world. Due to lagging adoption, many of these new innovations have yet failed to generate revenue that was expected by mobile network operators, application and content developers. There are several factors which are affecting the service adoption by consumers. This paper aims to provide practitioners and academics, an insight on what consumers' preferences are by using an Analytic Hierarchy Approach (AHP). The objective of this paper is to identify factors influencing the adoption of the mobile services. In this study we have considered Payment Mode, Functionality, Added Value and PQCP (perceived quality, cost and performance) as the main service adoption factors. The survey results indicate that Functionality is the most important influencing factor for the respondents, followed by Added Value, PQCP and Payment Mode.Adoption,AHP,Mobile Value Services,Consumer's Preferences

Business Architecture: A New Paradigm to Relate eBusiness Strategy to ICT

In this paper we address the concept of business architecture. We explain the concept and, based on a case study, discuss its relevance, operation, relationship with strategy and business models, and value for an organization. Business architectures contribute to clarify the complexity within an organization and form a useful starting point from which to develop functional, information, process and application architectures. In addition, an explicit business architecture helps to structure the responsibilities within an organization, and to shape outsourcing activities, within the primary process as well as with regard to ICT-support. Business architectures contribute to an adequate ICTgovernance in order to orchestrate the resources for critical business activities and how to manage the development and support for e-business efficiently

Business Architecture: A New Approach to Improving a Corporation\u27s Adaptability to Strategic Change

In this paper we discuss a research project on design and use of a Business Architecture. The Business Architecture objective is to improve the adaptability of a corporation to its strategy. A Business Architecture attributes the responsibilities for important business and/or economic activities to business domains. This can be done on the level of supply chain, enterprise and/or business unit.. The Business Architecture concept clarifies the complexity within an organization and is a useful starting point for the coherent design and governance of functional, information, process and application architecture

Preferences in data usage and the relation to the use of mobile applications

While most user studies on mobile telecommunications focus on adoption of services, preferences in the use of data networks has hardly been studied. In this paper, we analyse data collected directly on smartphones to study preferences of users between cellular and WiFi networks. Moreover, we assess how the use of specific types of applications contributes to data consumption. In absolute terms, use of WiFi is higher than use of cellular networks. The spread among participants in use of cellular networks is very high, ranging from 0 to 100% of their total traffic. There are no significant differences between Apple and Android users. No effects were found of the size of the data plan on the amount of cellular data being consumed. Cellular network usage is especially driven by chat, social networking and browsing applications. High users of video applications do not significantly consume more bandwidth, which is at odds with conventional ideas on the capacity crunch. Log data on application usage explains data consumption better than self- -reported usage levels. The results are relevant for telecom operators to steer the amount of data being consumed over their cellular and WiFi networks. However, data consumption levels do differ greatly across the population, and as a large proportion of data traffic cannot be explained by application usage levels, preferences for data usage cannot be very well explained

Analyzing the business model for mobile payment from banks' perspective: An empirical study

The increasing number of smart phones presents a significant opportunity for the development of m-payment services. Despite the predicted success of m-payment, the market remains immature in most countries. This can be explained by the lack of agreement on standards and business models for all stakeholders in m-payment ecosystem. In this paper, the STOF business model framework is employed to analyze m-payment services from the point of view of one of the key players in the ecosystem i.e., banks. We apply Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to analyze the critical design issues for four domains of the STOF model. The results of the analysis show that service domain is the most important, followed by technology, organization and finance domains. Security related issues are found to be the most important by bank representatives. The future research can be extended to the m-payment ecosystem by collecting data from different actors from the ecosystem

Customer and Network Value of Mobile Services: Balancing Requirements and Strategic Interests

Designing business models for mobile services is a complex undertaking. A business model can be seen as a blueprint of four interrelated components: service offering, technical architecture, and organizational and financial arrangements. Little attention has been paid to how these different components are related to one another. Multiple actors have to balance different design requirements, strategic interests, and business logics to create a win–win situation, in which each actor has incentives to cooperate. Knowledge on the interrelation between and within the four components is needed to enhance our understanding of what constitutes a viable business model. In this paper, the connections between these components are explored by analyzing the critical design issues in business models for mobile services (e.g., targeting, branding, and customer retention in the service domain; security, quality of service and system integration in the technology domain; network governance in the organization domain; and revenue sharing in the finance domain). A causal framework is developed linking these critical design issues to expected customer value and expected network value, and hence to business model viability

Balancing Requirements For Customer Value Of Mobile Services

Designing business models for mobile services is a complex undertaking because it requires multiple actors to balance different design requirements. A business model can be seen as a blueprint of four interrelated components or domains: service, technology, organization and finance domain. Little attention has been paid to how these different domains are related to each other. This knowledge is needed to enhance our understanding of what constitutes a viable business model. In this paper the connections between two of these domains, namely service and technology domain, are explored by analysing critical design issues in business models for mobile services, i.e. targeting, creating value, branding and customer retention in the service domain, and security, quality of service, management of service profiles, system integration and accessibility in the technology domain. A causal framework is developed, which link these critical design issues to expected customer value and business model viability.