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Ericsson | A practitioners’ guide to accelerate 5G for business in 2020
Chapter 2: First-mover advantages
5G pushes importance of first-mover advantages to new levels The first blog in the Practitioner’s Guide series addressed how 5G contributes to accelerating the pace for businesses. This follow-up explains the importance of first-mover advantages for service providers and their enterprise customers. In the 4G era, there was a choice between being a first mover and being a follower. For 5G, the bias has shifted to a market where first-mover advantages rule. Businesses see first-mover advantages as the most important strategic priority for 5G, with narrow windows to target for leadership.
Recap on the 4G launch
When looking back at when 4G networks were launched, a few things were characteristic: • Communications service providers were choosing between first-mover and follower strategies, with significant variations between regions and within a given market. • 4G focused on the consumer value proposition. • Few communications service providers launched in the first year of service. • The initial performance difference between HSPA (maximum 168Mbps) and LTE (maximum 150Mbps) was small. Often with arguments that 3G was good enough. • There were few smartphone options available in the first 30 months. The market dynamics for 5G are different. The global build of networks in the first years is close to parallel across the globe. The availability of devices, and adoption by consumers, in the first years,
was on a different level. There are reasons to believe that firstmover advantages will rule in the 5G era. Further, the measurement of the advantages has moved from quarters to months.
Enterprises’ 5G priorities
Ericsson conducted a major survey in 2018 to understand enterprises’ 5G priorities. The study addressed both strategic and business priorities with a few factors standing out: • 73 percent of enterprises saw first-mover advantages as the most important strategic objective for 5G. • Two additional strategic objectives reached over 50 percent: the desire to be perceived as innovative (54 percent), and the understanding that 5G is key to digital transformation (53 percent). • Faster time-to-market for new products and services (77 percent) was the most crucial business objective. • And was closely followed by increased business efficiency (74 percent) and reduced cost (67 percent) in the business priority category. So, what could one conclude from these figures? Faster TTM and first-mover advantage were a priority from the early 5G deployments. This is consistent with the priorities today.
