Measuring the value of mobile telecommunications networks

Fuentelsaz, Garrido and Maicas (2015) propose an “improved” measure of network value for the mobile telecommunications industry. Unfortunately, their measure has multiple issues. For one, it is biased against networks that are small and/or active in small markets. Also, it cannot adequately take into account intertemporal changes in mobile operators’ price discrimination behaviour. Finally, where the functional form of the network effects is concerned, Fuentelsaz et al. invoke Zipf’s law without providing any empirical justification. This paper suggests an alternative for Fuentelsaz et al.’s measure and exploits as yet unused data on on-net discounts to apply it to the cases of Germany and Belgium. It is shown that the alternative measure does not suffer from the same weaknesses as Fuentelsaz et al.’s measure – bar the final one. The paper therefore screens the literature on other network industries in search of an empirical foundation for the network externality assumption. However, the paper finds that the broader literature is also still struggling with this issue.     

Governance mechanisms for mobile service innovation in value networks

Service innovation often requires multiple organizations to work together in complex, dynamic networks. Existing literature shows that mechanisms like trust, power and contracts govern activities in organizational networks. Scholars rarely study how such a mix of mechanisms evolves over time, especially not in relation to different stages of service innovation. This paper connects a phasing model on service innovation to concepts of inter-organizational governance in value networks, by examining what governance mechanisms are in use during service development, implementation and commercialization. This study analyzes an international survey among operators, content providers and application developers in the Mobile Internet services domain, which is noted for its complex inter-organizational networks. The findings suggest that power-based governance is in use in the early stages of developing service concepts and technologies, while trust-based governance is in use during implementation, roll-out and commercialization. Contract-based governance is most common during implementation and roll-out.     

Evaluation of technological and socio-economic issues affecting the deployment of home networks: evidence from the ICT-OMEGA project

Home networks (HNs) are rapidly becoming the next battlefield for various telecom carriers and companies. The European project ICT-OMEGA seeks to enable the convergence of the diverse wireless and wireline technologies at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. In such a world of converging, heterogeneous HN technologies, system designers needs to take into account several technical, economic and social aspects that will effect the development and the rate of adoption of HNs by the general public. Careful roadmapping is required to ensure a smooth transition from existing to the next generation HN systems. The objective of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the key technological and socio-economic issues, which may affect the deployment of HNs. Within the OMEGA project, such issues are addressed using surveys conducted by the project experts, designed based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In this paper, the results of the surveys, conducted using pairwise comparison (which is an important ingredient of AHP) are presented. Several critical aspects are identified and their importance is weighted. The conclusions drawn are important for the overall roadmapping effort of future HN technologies.     

移动的风采

2000年12月12至16日,羊城百车争艳,名品汇集。由中汽对外经济技术合作公司、法兰克福展览(香港)有限公司、广州市政府汽车工业办联合主办的第四届广州国际汽车展览会在中国出口商品交易会会展中心隆重举行。来自澳大利亚、德国、意大利、韩国、新加坡、瑞典、美国、中国等10个国家和地区,近200余家厂商参展,展出各类车辆80余辆。约16万人次相拥本次展览会。在展会上,国内整车厂商的兴趣和积极性远远高于国际知名厂商,主要有广州本田,上海大众、一汽大众、神龙富康、东南汽车(福建)、沈阳金杯、跃进汽车集团、长安铃木、长安汽车集团、亚星-奔驰、广     

Development and deployment of brand protection strategies for China

Counterfeiting has become an enormous global challenge for brand owners. Companies recognize that solely legal protection measures are not sufficient to handle this problem. A comprehensive protection concept seems to be necessary to secure their future performance especially in the fast growing Asian markets. Based on experiences of Western brand owners in China, this article provides guidance for companies to develop and implement appropriate strategies to fight against Chinese counterfeiters. Wolfgang Saueressig Bosch Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. — Senior Manager Brand Protection Automotive Asia-Pacific Quality Brands Protection Committee under China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment — Chair Automotive Industry Working Group     

Diffusion models of mobile telephony

Growth models are applicable to mobile telephony diffusion. Although cross-sectional performance comparisons of models are numerous, varying stages of the S-shaped diffusion curve have not been analyzed by longitudinal studies. This study determines whether the best model applies to an entire diffusion life span. Mobile telephone subscriber data for Taiwan during 1988-2007 are analyzed to compare the performance of three popular diffusion models and one well-known forecasting model—the Gompertz, Logistic, Bass, and time-series autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models, respectively. Empirical results indicate that the Gompertz model outperforms the other models before diffusion take-off, and the Logistic model is superior after inflection and over the aggregate range of the diffusion. Network externalities are the dynamics of the Logistic model and account for its excellence. This longitudinal study is the first to present empirical evidence indicating that the appropriate diffusion model for mobile telephony is stage-dependent, complementing the case dependency of the appropriate diffusion model demonstrated by cross-sectional studies.     

手机"新"语

当今,拥有一部手机似乎成了现代人的标志与象征。80年代末,移动通讯开始进入中国市场,第一代手机新贵 Motorola 8900曾以令人咋舌的三四万元的昂贵价格闪亮登场,因个体庞大,而被国人称为"大哥大"、"大砖头",其身影常见于80年代末至90年代初的港台影视剧中。谁想到,短短几年间手机就迅速"大众化"。如今只要花一两干元,你就能拥有一部性能、功能俱佳,外形小巧别致,名副其实的"手机"。如今市场上的手机日新月异,常常令购买者眼花缭乱。     

The microeconomics of mobile payments

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking - In this paper, a Kranzberg [32] - Lancaster [34] approach is employed to investigate the microeconomics of mobile payment methods. The...     

Quality function deployment application for improving quality of education in business schools

There is an increasing competition between universities globally to attract students. At this point, to compete, it is imperative for the universities to improve the quality of education provided for their stakeholders, including students, parents, and employers. For improving the quality of education, first of all, the universities should make efforts to understand stakeholder expectations, by analyzing their needs and wants. For this purpose, the authors incorporated the quality function deployment technique with fuzzy analytical network process. Due to the vagueness present in the evaluation of relative importance of the criteria for higher education, fuzzy set theory is integrated.     

Product development benchmarking versus customer focus in applications of quality function deployment

The study explores the tradeoff between efforts to benchmark on product-development practices and be customer focused in the implementation of a quality-improvement method. The results of a survey of thirty-three firms' experience with quality function deployment (QFD) reveal that benchmarking on how competitors, peers, or role models develop products facilitates process improvement but hinders customer focus. Smaller firms are also shown to gain more customer focus and process-improvement benefits from QFD than larger firms.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Office of Manufacturing Management Research, the National Quality Research Center, and the Manufacturing Forum at the University of Michigan's School of Business Administration as well as the kind assistance of the American Supplier Institute for making this study possible.     

Consumer acceptance of the mobile Internet

Technological innovations are often designed to help consumers save time. However, some consumers refuse to use innovations and downgrade their usability with increasing usage time. The purpose of this research is to find out how consumers?? personality in younger (vs. older) men (vs. women) affects behavioral choices of the mobile Internet, as an example of new technology, and how usage time affects perceived ease of use of innovative (vs. established) media. The study shows that innovativeness, low desire for social contact, and technology optimism, in interaction with demographics, determine whether consumers choose mobile Internet services over substitutes. Job-related dependency on technology and gender directly affect choice behavior. The study reveals that ease of use is downgraded as more time is spent using the mobile Internet, whereas there is no such relation for established media. The results help explain overoptimistic forecasts that were made in the field of technology acceptance.     

论超强有效市场

考虑到信息不对称、信息尤其是前瞻性信息的获得需要花费较高成本等因素,本文认为即使市场实现了强式有效,也不意味着经济效率就必然会实现.鉴于此,文中放松了有效市场理论的假设,考虑了前瞻性信息生产的不确定性,提出了超强有效市场的概念,并构造了一个超强有效均衡的模型.本文指出只有存在充分有效的激励和约束机制,使得投资者和经理都能努力生产关于公司潜在投资项目的前瞻性信息,并且经理会对股价传递的信息做出积极的反应时,股票市场才会真正在实现信息效率的同时充分发挥优化资源配置的功能.     

Google kicks off mobile payments

According to Xinhua, in a step to make the credit card obsolete, Google Inc. has enlisted Visa to push mobile payments with the ＂Google Wal- let＂ project allowing Visa account-holders to pay for purcha...     

Context and mobile services' value-in-use

Context is an inherent part of service use experiences that helps to understand when mobile services generate superior value-in-use for customers and are preferred to other services, but little research exists on the subject. In order to fill this void, a theoretical value framework incorporating context is proposed. The findings of 85 mobile service use situations indicate strong evidence for two types of value: context value and value-in-use. Furthermore, the paper identifies new context value categories such as uncertain conditions, refines the meanings of other context and value-in-use categories, and concludes that conditional value enhances the value of mobile services.     

以移动音乐爱好者之名——诺基亚音乐品牌回顾

在EDC《2007年中国音乐手机市场竞争力分析报告》中,诺基亚2007年1到7月的各项指标均名列前茅,其中音乐手机市场上关注比例优势最为突出,已占据四成以上市场份额,高出第二名27个百分点以上,而且依然处于上升态势。2006年易观国际的报告显示,诺基亚是消费者最认可的音乐手机品牌,