Power Shift
Global ICT powerhouses’ rankings are changing as digital content providers, messenger service providers and platform providers are taking the place of mobile carriers and hardware manufacturers.
On September 5, the stock price of Tencent rose by approximately 4.2% and its market cap increased to about US$256.6 billion, exceeding that of China Mobile by a margin of US$2.6 billion and allowing the company to join the ranks of the global top 10 market cap companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon.
The situation is not much different in South Korea. Naver has already surpassed KT and SK Telecom in aggregate market value by combining its large customer pool with various mobile, shopping, messenger services and the like and launching new platform businesses such as smart car and smart home. Likewise, Tencent is expanding its business to cover online ad and e-commerce while increasing the number of its customers by means of its games, social networking service of QQ and WeChat mobile messenger.
Under the circumstances, digital innovation is required for companies that have grown based on hardware manufacturing. This has to do with the concept of disruptive innovation, which is currently led by Tesla, Uber, Alibaba, etc.