I was going through my old notes and stumbled upon a comment from a really clever guy from a UK analyst house (who shall remain anonymous).
He had given an amazing talk about all the new stuff happening on the Internet and its impact on traditional telecom and such. He was pretty harsh on operators, so I wanted to test an idea of mine, that I thought was clever – that we need to help operators understand the potential of the Internet, how they need to find value in other layers of the business, and so on.
Doug then looked at me and told me I was way wrong, that (I don’t remember the exact quote), ‘Operators are not enemies, that gives them too much credit. They are merely irrelevant. They are just utilities. Irrelevant. Buggy whips.’
Huh.
Made me stop an think.
Do you have similar characterizations?
yes, ’nuff said.
Well, look at Nokia in the US. Right now, if operators don’t carry phones, phones don’t get sold. All in all, I don’t see any people here in Silicon Valley walking around with laptops, but do see many people walking and talking on cell phones.