Ringtone Resonance
I was reading an interview with Keith Pardy, SVP for Nokia's strategic marketing, published in a recent issue of the Mc.Kinsey Quarterly. Commenting on the fast paced nature of the mobile handset market, Mr.Pardy talks about how Nokia researches consumer behavior and segments their consumer base into 12 groups - each with its unique characteristic of what they would expect from a Nokia phone. He goes on to say that at any time, Nokia deals with releasing 50 products a year worldwide, each with a lifespan of 12-24 months.
The complexity of managing such a dynamic product line in the high-tech industry can be mindboggling...the backward and forward integration with supply-chains, the preciseness and simplification of marketing campaigns and the keen balancing of development and sustenance efforts.
Imagine my surprise then, when I read this article announcing Comcast's intention to begin selling cordless phone sets with enhanced features. The cable industry has been aggressive in their market statements of late - taking on the ILECs and their plans to enter the entertainment world (See this article from the 2007 Cable Show).
CableCos and telcos are faced with this new challenge: business models that were built around the notion of long-cycle product deployments are now obsolete. If consumer preferences change at lightning pace, will they be able to achieve time-to-market for their service innovations, like Nokia does with its product engineering? A recent survey of telco executives by Amdocs emphasizes the importance of good OSS to achieve time-to-market, but I think it goes beyond that. While automation is key, nimbleness also requires seamless and quick information exchange across departments and partners. It requires intimate understanding of consumers - built through relationships rather than products.
Given their closeness, service providers can learn a lot from device suppliers about managing rapid product deployment.
