We saw it in the music industry when Napster appeared on the Internet. Global record music companies freaked out when they saw their profits going to hell due to the online file sharing service. The answer was as expected – the music industry went to court and sued against the file sharing business. They won that fight but not the war since the whole music business as it existed is shaking. Nowadays how many people really go to a record store to buy a CD?? Online music business is the future but the music industry tried to protect their interest and where not considering of changing or adapting to the changing needs in the market.

Funny enough it seems that now the mobile phone industry, the provider in particular, are facing the same problems. 2 weeks ago I was on a business trip to Japan and met with several mobile phone producers and managers from the semiconductor industry. In Japan  the providers are literally dictating the producers what the have to develop in order to stimulate the Japanese market.
However back here in Europe it seems that the providers as well are starting to tell the mobile phone producers what to put into the phones and what not. Probably you saw it this week on the news or Internet. T-Mobile does not want to sell Nokia phones which have Skype installed any more ( Skype is a software applications that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet). The reason T-Mobile announced was that Skype could overload the mobile network. Probably not the real reason since you can make phone calls via the Internet for free with a wireless access point. So again pure protectionism from the providers instead of thinking what business opportunities are laying in front of them. Nokia and Skype just had an agreement in February to equip more phones with this software. For the providers a total alert. They have lost already customer who went for a cheaper prepaid service provider, they don`t want to loose even more. But this protectionism will not help because consumer will for sure move to cheaper phone calls if possible. Again this will have an extreme impact on the mobile phone market. And for the providers it`s about time to consider how to adapt to the new conditions or even find some business opportunities.