Nothing Changes with Sunrise New Face and Strategy

Sunrise, the integrated Swiss alternative operator, recently changed its logo and strategy in an attempt to re position itself as the real and only alternative to Swisscom.

It's not the first time, in the last 8 years Sunrise had tried everything to increase its market share and become a real threat to Swisscom and Orange and a major player in the market.

With alternative successes and failures Sunrise has modified several times its prices, services and position in the market achieving only confusion and lack of trust from its customers.

First: Sunrise, do what you do best and don't confuse with different and conflicting messages your customers!

Sunrise's customers are unaware of the differences between the new and the old Sunrise.

Prices models changed, yes, but why?

At the end of the day nothing really changed!

The same basic price plans that diAx introduced 8 years ago, with some variations but - at the end of the day - the same. There is a lack of innovation.

Second: Decide! What is your business like?

Accessing your homepage a mobile phone welcome me. Almost immediately I realize that your strategy is focused only on the mobile market.

I do not see any information on your fixed and broadband businesses; and it takes some time, several clicks, to find them.

I understand that you are not doing lots of money with them, but if you want to be an alternative to Swisscom you should actively bundle, pack and supply your products as communication services. Not as separated products.

Are you shifting the attention of your customers to your core business?

Clever, business-school type strategy, however, in doing this you are now very similar to Orange. Why should customer choose you instead?

Third: Learn from your mistakes and take the best from other markets.

You have the unique opportunity of becoming the 'only' real alternative to Swisscom.

Don't miss it with 'cleaver' top-down strategies, instead try hard to be different, unique!

And actively communicate, every time, your uniqueness.
:-)

ICT Industry strategic landscape

In the last years in the ICT industry many firms had a strategy focussed on implementing technology, rather than effectively managing resources.

I believe that the industry is now at a new, so-called, transformation point, where the environmental pressures to transform and adapt to the context are not sustainable.

In this case, to evolve and mature I would suggests to integrate all systems and successively manage the resources.

Convergence and Digitalisation

Convergence and digitalisation are part of a new and important phenomenon that influences strategy and business models. There is no surprise that it attracted so much attention from so many stakeholders. David Currie, OFCOM chairman, argued in December 2003 that convergence was slowly happening at network, device, industry and regulatory levels (4th ECTA Regulatory Conference, 10 December 2003). Now, almost four years later, convergence is reality with, as industry’s norm, Quad and Triple play offers (fixed, mobile, data and TV). In the EITO 2007 Report the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, defines digital convergence as the ‘heart of new technology revolution’ (EITO, 2007 p. 12) and notes how the ICT sector is ‘adjusting to stronger competition and digital convergence’ (EITO, 2007 p. 14).
In the telecommunication industry convergence is based on the integration of IP systems and telephony. In ICT it can be described as the integration of fixed, mobile, data and telephony networks and IT systems (e.g. IMS). An example is the application of e-commerce systems to mobile networks.
Convergence has been enabled by the decreased cost of digitalisation of products, success of Internet and increase digital systems customisation opportunities. Digitalisation permits to deliver a wide range of push and pull products, mainly designed as voice, data and video services, in an innovative, intuitive and customisable fashion and over a sole electronic communication platform. An integrated IP-based network gives diverse firms the opportunity to invest and launch flexible and timely products for a considerable lower unit cost; in this perspective economy of scale and scope is expected to be maximised, competition at retail level enhanced and value-to-customers efficiently delivered. However, our understanding of convergence should not be limited to technological convergence. As phenomenon, it expands to business models (e.g. from e-commerce to m-commerce), markets (no boundaries), services (bundles) and organisation (horizontal organisations serving different markets). For example, e-Bay acquired Skype and Pay-Pal to address two basic needs of its customers: communicate about the products and pay. Telecom Italia merged with TIM to increase efficiency, offer a complete set of communications products and upgrade its business model.

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iPlayer and the net

BBC is offerring a new Internet download and broadcasting service for a wide range of BBC television programmes (currently in Beta Phase) and ISPs are already complaining that this new service will use a large amount of bandwidth and places an intolerable strain on networks. Some ISPs want to sniff traffic and limit download speed for IPlayer traffic. BBC download service is potentially less dangerous that Joost, that offers P2P TV, because it tolerates higher delay of traffic and can for the moment be run at flexible quality of service (for example, at peak or off-peak network times). BBC tries in this way to redesign its value-chain and deliver its services via Internet, cable and other platforms. Digitisation permits, therefore, to rewrite the rules of production and distribution of content. However, BBC plans do crash with network's operators own plans of convergence. In this case, it can be suggested to include in the strategy a collaborative approach and include the largest number of potential value-chain participant in the project.

New and Old regulation

Firms of the new economy do not like to be regulated even if they hold a form of monopoly. Customers, like Microsoft, standards, like Intel or services, like Goggle are new forms of bottlenecks. For example, Goggle Advertising service hold some 60% of the global market share and is starting to attack new markets, yes even software games will have advertising.