The global auto industry seems headed for change on its
enormous scale. The changes will be wrenching and difficult and will devastate
some players and create major opportunities for others.
In the 1990s, telecom moved headlong into a decade of transformation
that rewrote the rules forever: competition, a change in the underlying
technologies, and the migration from narrowband voice to broadband data and
from wireline to wireless, and the diffusion from expensive services for the
world’s middle class and wealthiest to absolute global ubiquity were the
ingredients to this recipe for change.
And now, the auto industry faces challenges on a similar
scale, driven by similar forces.
