Alcatel-Lucent: Marketing the Cell Phone as a Mobile Wallet

Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) was gearing up for the launch of a new business: mobile payment services. Mobile payment involves cash transactions between consumers and merchants or between consumers using their mobile phones. The emergence of a new technology in which ALU had strong expertise - near-filed communication (NFC) - represented a huge opportunity, as analysts expected the market for mobile payments to explode in the coming years. But to avoid possibly severe adoption hurdles ALU would need to position the new service with the utmost care, segment the market and choose which customers to target.