The Development of Mobile Services - The Impact of Actor Groups in the Standardization Process

This paper presents the impact of actor groups in the development of new mobile services. We have taken a micro view and collected actual data from a standardization process to contrast the general macro perspective in use. We develop four metrics; strength, openness, depth and efficiency to measure the impact of groups. Our findings indicate that contrary to popular belief the manufacturers and operators still dominate the development process. They score highest on all aspects while the application vendors score low on almost all aspects. We also find that governments and content providers are almost absent from the standards development process for new mobile services. Keyword: Actor groups, Mobile services, standardization, development process