Economics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Economics - Assignment Example Manufacturers are essentially limited to the manufacturing of mobile handsets and accessories and supply them to the mobile phone network service providers. Most of the major manufacturers of mobile phone sets are however, foreign and UK imports mobile phones. Major manufactures of mobile phone handsets include Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Sony Ericson are all foreign firms providing mobile phone handsets and other accessories to the service providers.1 Network operators offer airtime and data services to the end users as well as other tied services. They also offer services to indirect services providers as well as the virtual network service providers. They also sell packages to the customers as well as to the dealers to provide pay as you go as well as other bundled services to end users. Dealers actually operate through their retail outlets and offer mobile phone handsets as well as services obtained from the network operators. Though there are large numbers of smaller and independent dealers however, market seems to be dominated by the few very large dealers such as phone4U and other dealers. The growth of mobile phone networks in UK started during 1985 when government started to de-regulate the market. Since then there has been mushroom growth of the mobile networks in the country. Over the period of time, new services have been added thus increasing the overall depth and breadth of the market. (Doyle and Smith, 1999) Some estimates suggest that there are more than 80 million users of mobile phone data services across the country. Such growth in the market therefore suggests that UK is one of the growing markets for the mobile phone networks. What is also critical to understand that the overall number of service providers have remained limited despite such growth in the market. Initially very few operators were allowed to operate however the overall inclusion rate has increased in the recent past. Firms like Orange, O2, and Vodafone