News Article:
Bored of only hearing about ESP-END?
As we all know, Disney has called it a day for Mobile ESPN as an MVNO. The ESPN venture is not the first MVNO to fail and it will not be the last MVNO to fail; remember Virgin Singapore? The mighty Virgin Mobile has not been a success in every country it has launched in.
Should we really be surprised that an MVNO has not made it in a market of 300 million people where 50 MVNOs already operate and multiple traditional carriers dominate? If you are targeting a fast moving, highly competitive and mature market you really do have to do something special to be a success. ESPN offered mobile content. The m-content market is simply not comparable to the voice and messaging based market; it has potential but the money is still where the market began. In simple business terms, ESPN looked to cash in on a star but forgot to feed their cash cow.
Why the need for doom and gloom? There are still over 200 active MVNOs in operation across the world and countries such as Spain, Italy, Ireland, Chile, all the African nations and the Middle East region are still to come on board. Predictions? It’s fair to say that activity is slowing or stopping in over cooked MVNO markets, but the MVNEs of these markets started looking abroad a long time ago. There are many OSS/BSS companies who state that they are not seeking further clients as all their marketing resources are taken by concentrating on their existing client base. Maybe some more MVNOs will go under, but not all MVNOs have set their sights on multi million subscriber bases.
Perhaps the buzzword should be evolution, not bust.