If you take the long view, some “news” items are not surprising. If you observe that mobile data revenues are peaking, then it is not too surprising when a decline occurs. Analyst Chetan Sharma notes that U.S. mobile data services revenue had seen quarter-over-quarter growth for 17 straight years until the first quarter of 2017
In that quarter, revenue growth went negative.
Verizon saw its first-ever decline in service revenues, year over year.
For the first time, industry postpaid net-adds also were negative, while, for the first time, cars accounted for 50 percent of the total net-adds for the quarter, Sharma notes.
A product lifecycle top has been coming for some time. In developed markets, after “everyone who wants to use mobile” is doing so, and when “everyone who wants to use mobile data” is doing so, and when “everyone uses as much as they need”, the market simply is saturated.
And that means, as executives have understood, drives the search for big sources of new revenue to displace the lift once provided by mobile data services. That is why internet of things, and the emergence of pervasive computing is so important.
