The Six Immutable Laws of Mobile Business

INTRODUCTION

THE SIX IMMUTABLE LAWS OF MOBILE BUSINESS

The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.

—SF author William Gibson, 1999

Currently, more than one-half of the world’s population owns a mobile phone, and we are slowly arriving at the point where the world’s entire population will live in range of a mobile network. Mobile phones have become the most ubiquitous and indispensable digital devices on the planet.

In fact, by 2009 the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) showed that there are four times more mobile phone subscribers than Internet subscribers. They also outnumber PC owners 3:1, and television owners 2:1. They even outnumber fixed line telephone subscribers. No other service or technology has ever reached a similar diffusion level in such a short time.

If those figures do not impress you, let us put the phenomenon into financial perspective: At the end of 2007, global revenues from mobile phone related services reached parity with those derived from total worldwide crude oil production—figures no business executive can ignore. Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Omnicom Group, the world’s largest advertising agency holding company, stated “We are rapidly getting to the point where the single most important medium that people have is their wireless device.”

This book charts the future of the mobile platform. We were going to show you where we were, where we are today, and where the many dazzling developments ...