2024

Yang Nan

6G technology, enabled by modern software technologies, is under development and expected to be commercially available within the coming decade. Existing 6G research mostly focuses on technology standardization and lacks business consideration. Aiming to bridge the gap between 6G technology and business strategy, this study envisions the 6G ecosystem through the lens of software business. Exploring and understanding the 6G software business ecosystem helps the stakeholders identify their competitive strengths in the earlier stage and strategically prepare for the 6G era. This paper adopts Morphological Analysis as a future-oriented research methodology to depict the 6G software business ecosystem by decomposing that ecosystem into manageable components. It identifies the main ecosystem building blocks including technology enablers, external opportunities and challenges, and stakeholder roles. The findings are pioneers in the 6G software business field and highlight the complexity of the open 6G software business ecosystem.