You Can't Tell What Businesses Google, Facebook, Amazon or Vodafone, Orange and AT&T Might Be in in 10 Years

When headlines link “Google, Ford, Uber,” you know something is happening. When all three firms work together, across application, automobile and ride-sharing industries, something is pulling all three outside their present business models.

These days it can be dangerous to work in your own silo

Technology and competition now allow participants in just about any ecosystem to assume new roles. So Amazon is launching a fashion brand and supplying some of its own delivery services.

Google and Facebook already are Internet access providers. Google is a mobile and video entertainment services providers. Facebook and Google build their own servers, while Facebook has created an open source data center architecture.

To support its consumer access and video services, Google built its own decoders and modems, instead of buying them from existing telco and cable TV suppliers.

French telecom giant Orange has entered the banking business.

The point is that it is nearly impossible to know how your core business will change in 10 years, what you will be selling, to whom you will be selling, and who you will be competing against.

According to consultants at Accenture, 35 percent of polled consumers would consider buying their fixed high speed Internet access from Google; 20 percent would buy from Microsoft; about 17 percent would buy from Apple.

Some 32 percent would buy mobile Internet access from Google, while 24 percent would buy their mobile voice from Google and 26 percent would buy text messaging from Google.

You could probably get similar results asking consumers about which other potential suppliers they would buy from.

You might note that French telecom operator Orange is acquiring a majority stake in Groupama Banque, allowing Orange to create the mobile-only Orange Bank in France at the beginning of 2017.

Orange will own 65 percent of Orange Bank, while Groupama retains a 35 percent ownership.

Through Orange Bank, Orange and Groupama will offer all essential banking services over a mobile platform, including current accounts, savings, loans and insurance services, as well as payment.

The combined ambition for the two groups is to attract over two million customers in France. Plans call for expansion to Spain and Belgium as well.

“This agreement is a major step forward in our ambition to diversify into mobile financial services as we outlined in our Essentials 2020 strategy,” said Stéphane Richard, Orange chairman and CEO.

Orange's investment is part of its ambition to diversify its business, perhaps part of a potential trend: mobile operators becoming banks. That, in turn, is part of a larger effort by European and other mobile operators to avoid becoming dumb pipes.

The lesson is that watching and responding to your present competition might be a trap. The big competitors, and maybe future market leaders, increasingly come from outside your existing market.

That is why it is so important to spend at least some time pondering developments outside your immediate business and technology silo. That is just as true for suppliers of fixed wireless access as it is for mobile service providers, cable TV companies or giant app providers, device or infrastructure providers.