Winning in the wireless race: facing the challenges of competition. (Motorola Canada CEO Micheline Bouchard's address on market competition in the wireless telecommunications business)

Address by MICHELINE BOUCHARD, Chairman, President, CEO, Motorola Canada Limited

Delivered to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, Toronto, Ontario, May 21, 1998

Good afternoon. You think competition is tough in wireless. Just look at Championship car racing. Mark Blundell won the 1997 Molson Indy in Toronto by 0.659 seconds. That's just over half a second after several hours of driving.

And that stiff competition brings me back to wireless. Here's why. Every car in the race used a Motorola two-way radio. But Blundell loves to talk and used his radio to maximum strategic advantage in his Motorola-sponsored car. His wireless system was state of the art. Along with handling voice communication, his equipment transmitted reams of data about everything that was going on in the vehicle.

Did we make a difference? I think so. We were determined to put our best into Blundell's car. And we did. Still as anyone involved in racing can tell you, you must do a lot of things right to win the big races. No one consideration - from an excellent communications system, to a first-class driver, to a well-designed car, to a top-notch pit crew - can do it alone. You need them all.

And that brings me to my message. It's this. In today's fiercely competitive marketplace, the wireless companies that succeed must do many things right: listen closely to their customers, provide the best products, spend on R&D, and have an open flexible structure. No one action guarantees success. You need them all.

I'll illustrate my argument by looking at the company I'm proud to lead, Motorola Canada. But I think this discussion of wireless will have a broader relevance for the industry.

Competitive Marketplace

Let's begin by looking at that fiercely competitive marketplace.

I think we could expect competition among firms supplying the wireless market to be intense at any time. But the battle for market share is particularly intense because of changing technology, conflicting standards, falling prices, and an extraordinary growth in demand. We can look at each of these factors in turn.

We're now in the midst of a rapid and far-reaching shift in technology: the change-over from analogue to digital service. Most phones and most networks today are analogue. But analogue dominance won't last long. Digital …