It takes no great insight to predict that the next great wave of growth in broadband access will come on the mobility front. The reason is simple enough: the consumer and business fixed line markets are close to saturation. This bit of data shows SME adoption of broadband. Recent reports from November consumer usage of broadband show that more than 80 percent of consumers who used the Internet that month used broadband access. And the point to remember is that "saturation" means nearly every customer that wants the product buys it. Some 20 to 30 percent of U.S. households don't buy broadband because they don't want it, in many cases because they don't own PCs, or own PCs but find their usage is so limited that dial-up actually works.We expect the penetration figures to climb once broadband becomes a mass market platform for entertainment video, but the fact remains that buying of broadband for Internet access is close to its peak. And since suppliers always look for growth, they've got to turn attention to the places growth can be found, and that is the mobile market. The situation is very similar to what mobile carriers started to face five years ago, when they realized all the high-margin, then most of the mid-margin customers (adults), plus most of the formerly-unwanted low income segments were saturated. The one remaining customer segment not tapped was teenagers. So guess what? The industry went after teenagers to the point where most teenagers now have mobile phones.
The point is that supplier "push" can create its own demand, up to a point. And since the growth in broadband access lies squarely in the mobility space, that's where we are going to see serious efforts at demand creation. We do this all the time, by the way. Advertising aims to stimulate demand, in some cases convincing people they need something they presently do not. And marketing, recall, is the systematic attempt to create markets and customers, not simply to "respond" to existing demand. Mobile is next.
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