fferent layers, but only on one of the verticals (fulfillment, assurance or billing). A company had a broad strategy in case it was present in multiple verticals and horizontal layers. The service providers were also included in this classification as a separate category. Table 5 presents the percentage of the companies on each strategy differing by the breadth of operations and the changes in the percentage of companies with differing breadth of operations within the observed time period. The results show a minor shift towards an increasing breadth of opera- tions because of a higher decrease of a niche strategy companies compared to broader strategies. As also service providers may be considered as providing customer specific solutions for various segments, and therefore could be treated as executing a broad operations strategy, one could draw a conclusion supporting the suggested hypothesis. We suspect the telecom operators will concentrate their procurement even more to only a few providers and telecom software vendors to broaden their operations. This shift will cause a concentration in the OSS/BSS market, which is in line with the latter stages of the previously mentioned industry evolution theories. This SO called 'industry shakeout' has been present in the observed industry: the number of OSS/BSS software vendors has decreased between the years 2000 and 2006. Table 5 Changes in the breadth of operations of the OSS/BSS companies in the years 2000-2006 Breadth of op. Niche (%) Vertical-broad (%) Service providers (%) Y 2000 Y 2002 Y 2005 Y 2006 - -11.3 Analyzing the Current Phase of the OSS/BSS Software Market Also, the industry concentration models' prediction of increasing concentration was found to exist in the OSS/BSS software market. In summary, the empirical data suggests that, according to the industry lifecycle model, the extent of vertical integration, and the market consolidation, the OSS/BSS software market is shifting from the Growth phase to the Maturity phase. To conclude, the empirical data w