Incumbents’ and Entrants’ Strategies in new Sub-markets within Regulated Environments: The Case of public WLAN Hotspots in Western Europe’s Telecommunications

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the incumbents strategies and explore how being regulated affects the success in new sub-markets for entrants in the public hotspot market. Therefore 62 mobile network operators and the entrant market share in 17 Western European countries were analyzed according to their strategies and success. The results reveal that incumbents are caught in an area of conflict between regulation, internationalization, and technology strategy. The finding that late UMTS launch had an influence on incumbents in their sub-market strategy points to a sustaining scenario, as they could enhance their presence in the mobile broadband market. The results of the entrants strategies to enter the hotspot market indicate that the success of entrants in regulated markets depends on the regulation as well as on the incumbents resistance to regulation in the specific country. Finally, the impact of WLAN used as public hotspots shows a predominately sustaining innovation character regarding Western Europe's Telecommunications