MOBILE PHONE PROVIDER

Customer-marketing: a Mobile Phone Provider

Customer-marketing: A Mobile Phone Provider

The mobile phone market

The birth of the mobile communication industry resulted of a professional need, which means that people on the move sometimes had to be contacted urgently. AT&T's Bell laboratories made it possible in 1979 in the United States permitted thousand of people to switch messages in the same tiny bandwith. The Nordic area was also one of the pioneers, establishing cellular services in 1978 with the Nordic Mobile Telephone.

In 1982 was introduced the GSM( Groupe Spécial Mobile) by France Telecom Research & Development in order to establish an European standards system. In 1985, the European Commission decided to impose this standard, and in 1987 thirteen countries signed a memorandum concerning the implementation of the GSM, which has become in 1989 the "Global System for Mobile Communications".

The goals of this system consisted in two points:

Mobile phones are standardized and work on every operator' networks.

The network' elements (basic stations, switches...) are standardized, so it could be several suppliers and the competition can take place.

Main producers results in 2001 and the situation of the market today

In 2001, Mobile Phone is really the leadership in the world in producing mobile phones. It's the only firm which has increased her sales and her profitability. For example, the turnover of the company is now of 8 billion Euros (increased of 22%), and they produce a wage of 20.7%. To compare this number to the competitors, Motorola produce a wage of -17.6% and Ericsson has the record of the lowest one with -80%. Even in operating the GMS systems, the main activity of the Swedish company, her wage is of 4% when Mobile Phone's one is of 18%.

The other smaller competitors registered such a lot of losses, like the Sagem's turnover which has decreased of 22.5%, or the producers like Alcatel and Philips, which lost respectively 100 and 118 million Euros for turnovers of 350 and 372 million Euros.

Trends in the mobile phone market

We can say that we are now entering in the third generation of cellular phones, and the producers must now change their business policy in the well-developed countries, because on one hand, technology improve more and more, and on the other hand, the expectations of the customers have changed because of the evolution of the technology. At first, when it became possible for everyone to get a mobile phone, the people were so excited to be able to call from everywhere and not only at home. But now, consumers are used of it and with all the technologic progress, expect more about their mobile phone. The world of the telephony, the world of the computer science and the world of the video are about to converge, and the first one is certainly among telephony and computer science. We don't use anymore the traditional word "telephone" but more a definition of mobile handset.

And Mobile Phone, as the first producer of cellular phones in the world, gives us a really good example of ...