Analyst firm ABI Research has revealed the top 20 mobile operators in terms of their innovation.
ABI Research says Asian telcos are leaders in innovation, followed by U.S.-based telecom operators including AT&T and Verizon.
In fact, China Mobile, the largest 4G operator in the world, is leading the innovation space in 5G. The report did not mention about Indian telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio, among others.
The ABI research report recently indicated that European telcos are behind several Asian telecom operators in the innovation game. Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone are distant followers of China Mobile, NTT Docomo, Softbank and KDDI.
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ABI Research has selected top-20 mobile service providers and used the following criteria to rank them:
# Patent portfolios and efficiency: overall patent applications, publications and what percentage of patents are granted
# Standards contributions: 3GPP involvement in terms of approved Change Requests and rapporteurs
# Acquisitions and investments: for connectivity and non-connectivity companies
# R&D spend: how much telcos spend on internal R&D
# Open source: contributions to the OpenStack project
“Although many telcos complain that they find it difficult to foster innovation internally, our Telco Innovation Benchmark Study indicates that they are actually spending a minimum effort compared to vendors and web-scale companies,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, research director at ABI Research.
Asian telcos – namely NTT Docomo and China Mobile – have the highest scores across the board, indicating they are investing for the long-term and understand that 5G will require expertise outside their traditional connectivity domain.
NTT Docomo and China Mobile are enhancing their efforts to develop, acquire and invest in UnTelco areas to boost their revenue. UnTelco areas include telecom operators’ business opportunities beyond connectivity. Several telcos aim to address enterprise verticals and become much more than simple connectivity providers.
The report found that 20 percent of NTT Docomo’s recent patent holdings are in the non-connectivity domain. China Mobile is ramping up its efforts to acquire UnTelco patents: more than 35 percent of its recent patent acquisitions are in the non-connectivity domain.
European telcos are near the 10 percent mark.
“UnTelco expertise will become vital as 5G is deployed, and failure to become an innovation leader is equal to becoming, at best, a spectator of Asian and U.S. leaders and, at worst, prey to disruptors among web-scale companies and technology suppliers,” Mavrakis said.
ABI Research also suggests that European telcos should invest more efforts to build up expertise internally and become innovation hubs, rather than living under the shadow of their technology partners’ wings.
