"What Comes Next?" Will Eventually Matter

Whatever comes next as the key revenue driver and source of profit for connectivity providers, the key product will necessarily have to be a “communications” product of some sort. Since 1860, when “telephone service” was invented and commercialized, the key driver of industry revenue and profits has been some connectivity service.

Between 1860 and 1920 the primary revenue driver was the ability to place a local phone call, though subscriptions were not likely greater than about 10 million by the end of the period.

Starting in the late 1920s the ability to make international calls became a major revenue driver and the driver of industry profits. That continued to be the case until the late 1970s. But competition in long distance disrupted profits.

After the early 1980s, mobile phone service emerged as the driver of industry revenue growth, and finally the dominant revenue source and profit driver for the global industry. 

And while mobility services now drive a clear majority of all revenues, on fixed networks there has been an evolution from voice calling to internet access as the key revenue item. 

“What comes next?” is a logical question, as hard as it might be to envision a time when mobile phone services were not the industry revenue driver or its key source of profits. As computing eras have given rise to new products and value drivers, the connectivity business has moved through eras where the dominant revenue model has shifted. 

Right now I am hard pressed to envision what core connectivity service emerges to displace mobility as the industry revenue and profit driver. But replacements eventually will be developed. 

That evolution has happened in the connectivity business and the computing business as well. 

Computing cycles used to happen only on mainframes or minicomputers. Then we shifted to personal computers, then to client-server models, then to smartphones and embedded instances (calculators, cash registers, elevators and an ever-wider range of consumer electronics. 

Well over half of all computing cycles now happen on phones, according to Statista and IDC estimates. 

What comes next as an era of commuting is not so easy to categorize, though a new computing era is sure to arrive. One way some of us might point to what is coming is to argue that “the next 10,000 startups will essentially be based on “take X and add artificial intelligence.” 

Some might argue we now are in the era of cloud computing. Others will prefer the term “mobile computing.” Terms such as “pervasive computing” or “ambient computing” have been floated as well. 

Whatever the preferred term, computing now is highly distributed. Some might note that up to 46 percent of computing cycles happen on cloud computing fabrics. 

In both computing and connectivity industries, a next era will develop. The logical path seems clearer for computing, though, where applied artificial intelligence seems to underpin every major trend and development: metaverse, augmented reality, search, content consumption and creation, robotics, automation, advertising and shopping and education. 

Beyond the ability to make a phone call, international calling, mobile phones and internet access have been the key shifts in the connectivity business since 1860. As hard as it might be to contemplate, something else eventually is going to emerge. 

Edge computing, private networks, fixed wireless and internet of things might help. But none of them presently seems sufficient to achieve the mass scale to displace mobile phone service as the industry revenue and profit driver.