Since the advent of 3G, observers have expected the deployment of the next-generation mobile platform to enable new revenue drivers. Sometimes those new use cases do not develop at all, or are delayed as mass market use cases until the next generation.
In the 5G era, some believe media and video content will emerge as key drivers in consumer markets, while internet of things anchors new use cases in the enterprise markets.
But our experience with 3G and 4G suggests how long it might take for many new use cases to become commonplace. Many new 3G use cases actually did not emerge until 4G, for example.
And new use cases that drive business outcomes for mobile operators and app providers sometimes are the result of the interplay of multiple drivers: devices, consumer behavior, app creation and retail pricing models as well as mobile network capabilities and service packaging.
Some might argue that the 3G network simply was not capable of supporting the same apps that flourished in the 4G era. Others might argue end user demand was higher in the 4G era because customers already had decided mobile data was useful, and had created consumption habits, such as using navigation apps, that 4G was able to fulfill.
And some might argue widespread use of navigation did not happen until 4G because free services such as Google Maps appeared about 2010, while 4G was being launched about 2012. Some believed navigation was among the new apps 3G would enable.
In other words, many 4G apps that did not flourish in the 3G era because they had not yet been invented in a “free to use” form, had not been invented at all, or had not yet reached a mass adoption stage.
Facebook, for example, did not “go mobile” until about 2011, just before 4G launched in the U.S. market.
Navigation then became a killer feature of 4G because it allowed use of the smartphone--at no extra cost--instead of a specialized Garmin or other navigation unit, also requiring a subscription fee.
And while some predicted, during the 3G era, that the mobile phone would become the remote control for your life, that arguably did not happen until the 4G era. And some might say it was the development of the smartphone--with the touch interface, better cameras, accelerometers and so forth--that enabled the new apps, not so much the mobile access platforms.
The point is that wholly-new use cases and revenue models might take a while to develop as major commercial realities. That has been the history with next-generation mobile platforms.
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