Mobile Ecosystem Shifts to Apps

Whatever different participants might think about the change, the mobile ecosystem, traditionally quite closed, is becoming not only more "open," but also more complex. As that happens, value is shifting as well, towards the application layer and end user experiences, and with a greater role for the devices that enable those experiences.

“It is the ecosystem not the operating system that is important,” said Enrico Salvatori, Qualcomm’s European vice president. That's the reason one hears so much, so often, about the business problem of "dumb pipes."

But some of the change is inevitable. Apps always have been the reason people have bought network-based services. Consumers never directly buy the access itself. But the decoupling of app creation and network access means apps can be created at Internet speed, all the time, while networks have to be built physically.

“The cycles of innovation in applications are orders of magnitude less than those for service providers,” said Houston Spencer, marketing vice president at Alcatel Lucent.

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