Flagship firms, consolidation and changing market structures within the mobile communications industry

The structure and character of the European Union (EU) mobile telecommunications market are changing. Consolidation, scale economies and the far-reaching repercussions of 3G have given rise to a series of 'flagship firms' that have sought to co-ordinate the 2G and 3G licences held. In this paper, the co-ordination strategies of two flagship firms, Vodafone and Hutchison Whampoa, are examined. The paper concludes that competitive enhancing co-ordination strategies can be identified in six different areas, though these have not been uniformly adopted by the two flagship firms examined.