Telecoms.com
opinion
Top 40 to watch in mobile
Big hitters: 40 leaders who are shaping the industry
Big hitters: 40 leaders who are shaping the industry
Under the influence
Who really holds the reins in the mobile communications industry? This is a question with an endless answer, so intricate and complex are the webs which create the mobile services on which billions of people rely every day.
The mobile communications sector is chock full of influential people, so compiling a list of 40 key executives is not a simple task. There were hundreds of people that could have been included and so this list is by no means exhaustive. It does, however give an idea of who some of the most powerful people in mobile are. It’s not always the CEOs, for example. A rung or two down the ladder are the people directly responsible for developing products, setting individual strategies and planning out the future of the industry.
And not all the large companies in the industry are represented because there simply wasn’t room. Some entries (or absences) might surprise the reader, but subjectivity is inherent in any list like this. Some entries are there simply because we think they’re interesting. These people may not wield billion dollar budgets, but the impact of their work is certainly being felt.
It’s important to remember, as well, that this is not a ranking. We’re not saying that the person at the front of the list is more important than the person at the back; the entries are in alphabetical order. No doubt readers will have their own opinions to add, and we’d love to hear them. Please let us know what you think.
César Alierta Izuel, Telefónica
Vivek Badrinath, NGNMA
Simon Beresford Wylie, NSN
Andrew Bud,
mBlox
Andrea Casalini, Buongiorno
Peter Chou,
HTC
Vittorio Colao, Vodafone Group
Jay Freeman,
Cydia
Scott Forstall,
Apple
Morgan Gillis, LiMO Foundation
Dr. Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm
Stephen Hayes, 3GPP SG
Mitsunobu Komori, NTT DoCoMo
Ilja Laurs,
GetJar
Mike Lazaridis, Research In Motion
Andrew Lees, Microsoft
Didier Lombard, France Telecom
Masayoshi Son, Softbank Group
Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti Enterprises
Bill Morrow, Clearwire
Boris Nemsic, Vimpelcom
Michael O’Hara, GSM Association
René Obermann, Deutsche Telekom
Dr. Kai Öistämö, Nokia
Dr. Tero Ojanperä,
Nokia
Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook
Viviane Reding, European Commission
Ren Zhengfei,
Huawei
Andy Rubin,
Dr. Saad al Barrak, Zain
Patrick Slim Domit, America Movil
K Shin, Samsung Mobile
Sultan A. Bahabri, Hits Telecom
Dr Hamadoun Touré, ITU
Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel Lucent
Hans Vestberg, Ericsson
Jon von Tetzchner, Opera
Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile
Lee Williams, Symbian Foundation
Tags: Top 40
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what about MTN ? they have got to be higher up the ranking than Zain – with all due respect ?
Hi rmac,
It’s a list of the top 40 people to watch in the mobile space, not companies. But we’d love to hear readers’ opinions.
I am also surprise not to see Vodafone in the list!
Jay Freeman of Cydia alongside Scott Forstall of Apple.
Priceless.
I’m very pleased that telecoms.com have created this list – I like the fact you’ve delved beneath to find the people driving mobile.
I think it would be fascinating to keep in going for a few years to see the movement as our incredible industry progresses.
You include Samsung Mobile and not LG Mobile? LG has been pushing usability forward for several years now, while creating mass-market phones that fit needs for all different people. They’ve made it to the “top 3”, and done it with creative thinking, solid SW and quality hardware.
If you’re including Boris Nemsic it could probably make sense to include Alexander Izosimov who made Vimpelcom what it is now. I’m not sure what he’s up to now, but I’m sure that a person with such a track-record is the man to follow. But then again, it could also make sense to have Arun Sarin on the list as well.
Wow?! Really? When do CEOs of huge monolith followers ever make revolutionary direction setting decisions? Seems a pretty easy plug – wouldn’t change be driven by some engineer buried in a hole somewhere? And one woman & one black person seems to linear…
I’m really surprised that the list doesn’t include Naguib Sawiris ceo and founder of Weather Investments and Orascom Telecom..
With all due respect, but I think you’re missing out an African name: Mr. Ernest Ndukwe. He is probably the most influential African in the mobile business. As chief regulator of the Nigerian mobile industry, Ndukwe has won great respect and admiration from operators, consumers and governments. Transparency has always been his watchword in the industry. His drive has seen the growth of the mobile industry from a mere 400,000 subscribers in 1999 to an all time 68 million by end of July 2009.
I think we need more females in the list.
What a narrow view!!
What about Telkomsel (Indonesia) senior management who has more than 70 million subs? Perhaps the largest prepaid subs in the world, with more than 65% EBITDA!
What about SMART (Philippines) who pioneered micro payment using its stored value in the prepaid SIM Card?
What about NTT-DoCoMo, who perhaps has the most exptensive Location Based Service products, and managed to nurture and incubate more than 20,000 application developer???
You guys are so narrow, and you called yourself Leading Telco publiser?
What a shame….
The operators world are dominated by the Asians! The vendor world may still be dominated by the likes of NOK, ALU, ERIC, but mark my word, it will not be for long!!!!
Unfortunately not a single woman here… still way to go for women in the technology career.. hope that this improves in next year list.
I agree that this isn’t really a list of the innovative people who are changing the telecoms landscape. When I was in India this week someone from the regulator there said that Rajiv Mehrotra is the most important person in Indian telecoms. He’s the founder and inspiration behind VNL which has developed solar powered GSM base stations for use in areas where ARPUs are less than $2 a month. http://www.vnl.in Because this is a start-up vendor not known to MCI he won’t make this list. But as he has found a way for operators to build sustainable business models to connect the next xx billion then maybe he should.
I think MTN’s Phuthuma Nhleko should have been on this list. He is shaping the telecoms future in Emerging markets.
What about Motorola leaders in this list, definitely Top40 is not enough considering all the comments and the missing people in the industry..