Who owns the customer?
Discussion at the Canalys Mobility Forum turned to the channel in the afternoon and how the IT and telco channels are likely to converge.
According to Canalys research, the service provider channel - which in this context means the mobile operator channel - now accounts for 13 percent of all netbook shipments. This means that an increasing proportion of netbooks are sold as part of mobile broadband packages.
Furthermore, there appears to be a strong link between a vendor's fortunes in the netbook market and its relationship with the mobile operator channel. "There is a close correlation between the success vendors have in engaging with the service provider channel and their success in netbooks," said Alistair Edwards, senior analyst at Canalys.
Here's a slide illustrating this point. Sorry about the head.
It was stressed that there are multiple logistical and cultural challenges to the successful convergence of these channels, with the primary driver for the telco channel being to sell phone contracts and the IT channel led by hardware. Furthermore, the telco channel technique of hiding the true cost of ownership of a handset within the contract is considered less viable when selling PCs.
There is also the question of who owns the customer, the mobile operator or the PC vendor?
