The very latest thinking on 3G

October 8th, 2004

Tomi Ahonen’s latest mobile telecoms book 3G Marketing: Communities and Strategic Partnerships, 333 pages co-authored by Timo Kasper and Sara Melkko, is a solid handbook on the practical sides of why users are becoming addicted to mobile phones, and how to capitalise on that to introduce new services. It features the latest statistics and facts, and introduces several practical theories to illustrate why the mobile internet is different from the fixed internet. The book includes his famous Five M’s tool to build billable value to any service intended to be launched onto the mobile phone. We also get to learn about the Early Eight, the classes of services where the mobile phone provides an absolute competitive advantage over other digital delivery means, and such new phenomena as Murfing – mobile surfing – and Reachability. The book explains why mobile phone penetrations will exceed 100% in all Western countries, and shows how heavy users are migrating to SMS text messaging, and how communities swarm with mobile phones.

I strongly recommend the book to anyone wishing to understand why the mobile phone industry is growing so dramatically, outpacing all other industries, and accounting for example about 2.5% of the UK gross domestic product. As a digital delivery channel the mobile phone rules supreme, as 1.5 billion devices already exist around the world and every economically viable person on the planet can be accessed via the mobile phone. As a marketing channel, a sales channel, and a service distribution channel its potential has only just been touched. In barely 6 years the mobile phone already has taken 10% of the global music industry, 6% of the global video gaming industry and is making rapid inroads into the newsmedia, TV, etc industries.

The 3G telecoms opporunity is now, with already 45 networks live in 29 countries, and over 15 million subscribers already having upgraded to 3G phones. By the end of this year the revenues generated by 3G will amount to 20 Billion dollars. The truly connected age is upon us, and this book is the first to explain the full impact of that change. I recommend anyone involved in the information, telecoms and communications industry to read this book now.

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