McGuire’s Law

As I mentioned yesterday, this week I’ve been preparing the index for The Power of Mobility book.

As an indicator of the range of topics covered in the book, I thought it would be fun to share with you all the names of companies and other organizations that appear in the book. Check your mobility-geek knowledge by seeing how many of these companies you can recognize and see if you can figure out how they fit into a book about the power of mobility.

• ABC
• ABI Research
• Accenture
• Agilis Systems
• AllState GES
• Altair
• Amazon
• Ameritech
• Anyware Mobile Solutions
• AOL
• Apple Computers
• AT&T
• Avis
• Barnes & Noble
• BDC Consulting
• Bell Atlantic
• Bell Labs
• BellSouth
• Bluefire Security Technologies, Inc.
• BNET.com
• Boingo
• Bolt, Baraneck & Newman (BBN)
• Bones in Motion
• Busicom
• Cambridge University
• Centel
• CERN
• Cingular
• Cisco
• Comcast
• Compaq
• Computer Security Institute
• Cox
• CTIA
• Dell
• Detroit Police Department
• Deutsche Telekom
• Disney
• Domino?s Pizza
• Dry Cleaning To-Your-Door
• eBay
• EDS
• EMC
• Entrust
• Fairchild Semiconductor
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Federal Communications Commission
• Fleet Call
• Foresee Results
• Frost & Sullivan
• Garmin
• Gartner
• GeoSystems Global Corporation
• Google
• GTE
• Heathrow Airport
• Hewlett Packard
• IBM
• Intel
• International Telecommunications Union
• Intuit
• IOTUM Corporation
• Ipsilon
• J. Gold Associates
• Juniper Networks
• Justice Department
• JVC
• Kamida
• Kodak
• Lincoln Labs
• Living Stones Ministry
• London Stock Exchange
• Lucent
• Magnetic Telegraph Company
• MapQuest
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Mazzio?s Pizza
• McCaw Cellular
• McKenna Group
• McKinsey & Company
• Microsoft
• Montclair State University
• Morgan Stanley
• Motorola
• MSNBC
• MySpace
• National Physical Laboratory
• National Science Foundation
• Netflix
• Netscape
• Nextel
• Nortel
• NYNEX
• Oak Hills Presbyterian Church
• Pacific Telesis
• Palm
• PayPal
• PennWell Publishing
• People?s Republic of China
• Philips
• Pizza Hut
• Pointsec Mobile Technologies
• Pony Express
• Portable On Demand Storage (PODS)
• R. R. Donnelly & Sons
• Rand Corporation
• Rand McNally & Company
• Randstad USA
• RateItAll.com
• Rave Wireless
• RCA
• Research in Motion
• Roman Catholic Church
• Roper
• Skype
• Socialight
• Sony
• Southwestern Bell
• Sport Clips
• Sprint Nextel
• Sprint PCS
• Sprint Spectrum
• Strategy Analytics
• TCI
• TechSmith
• TeleChoice
• TeleNav
• Televigation
• Telmap
• Texas Instruments
• The Lego Group
• 3Com
• TiVo
• T-Mobile
• Toshiba
• United Telecommunications, Inc.
• University of California-Los Angeles
• University of Pennsylvania
• UPS
• Verisign
• Verizon Wireless
• Wildfire
• Xerox
• Xora
• Yahoo
• YouTube
• Zenith
• Zingy

Converging products into a cellphone is one way that mobility is getting built into every product, but it’s not the only way. Every month, I’ll focus on devices that are integrating the power of mobility into products themselves in ways that create new value for the customer. Power up!

• T-shirts
• Italian t-shirts
• Jeans
• Dog collars
• Watches
• Video players
• Radios
• Ultramobile PCs
• Toothbrushes
• Cars
• Scoreboards

As the Mobility Era matures, obviously a key question will be “how to make money?”. There are plenty of opinions on the best answer to this question. The below is very inclusive and I provide no editorial functions, so don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out):

• How “Sideloading” Threatens the Wireless Carriers
• Will enterprises hang up on desk phones?
• Japan: Cheap Cell Phones at What Price?
• Mobile VoIP: Killer App in More Ways than One
• Difficult access to games could cost carriers $110M
• If you call a phone a “computer”, do you regulate differently?
• Amp’d, another MVNO bites the dust
• Amp’d - Rectif’d
• The World’s Top Ten Non-voice Services for Mobile Operators
• The Southwest Airlines of Mobile Calling?
• Stick A Fork In Palm
• 5 ways iPhone will change the wireless biz
• For Clearwire, how good is the good news?
• CellCarriers fear mobile VoIP planet
• US Premium SMS Revenues Rise

This week, my free time has been consumed with preparing the index for The Power of Mobility book (thanks for your help Deanna!). Did you know that book indexes are largely compiled by hand? Neither did I, until now!

The author has the responsibility of going page by page through the book, selecting words and phrases to include in the index, and then figuring out every page on which that word, phrase, concept, etc. appears. I can’t imagine trying to do that in the days before electronic manuscripts with search tools. But even so, I learned how many words and phrases overlap. For example, I never new how many words have “wan” in them. Or did you know that “time” appears in the middle of “multimedia”?

Anyway - it’s been a great learning experience and a great opportunity to marvel at how much stuff goes into a book.

As an indicator of that, I thought it would be fun to share with you all the names of people that appear in the book. Check your mobility-geek knowledge by seeing how many of these names you can recognize and see if you can figure out how they fit into a book about the power of mobility.

• Alsever, Jennifer
• Bacon, Sir Francis
• Baran, Paul
• Bardeen, John
• Baschab, John
• Becker, Toby
• Beiagi, Alan
• Berners-Lee, Tim
• Best, James D.
• Bezos, Jeff
• Bloomberg, Jason
• Boulton, Matthew
• Brattain, Walter
• Brewer, Clete
• Briere, Danny
• Brown, John Seely
• Burke, John
• Carr, Tammy
• Cary, Frank
• Chapel, Dr. Edward
• Chappe, Claude and Rene
• Clausius, Rudolf
• Cole, Dr. Susan A.
• Davidow, William H.
• Davies, Donald
• Deering, Paul
• Dodd, Monroe
• Downes, Larry
• Duguid, Paul
• Dunckel, Tony
• Dunning, Jon
• Dyche, Jill
• Eckert, J. Presper
• Edison, Thomas
• Estridge, Don
• Federman, Mark
• Foster, Alan
• Franklin, Ben
• Frei, Frances X.
• Garcia, John
• Gates, Bill
• Goad, Tom W.
• Guevel, Gene
• Hagel, John III
• Haney, Kerin
• Henson, Paul H.
• Hertz, Heinrich
• Hoff, Ted
• Ibuku, Masaru
• Jin, H. P.
• Jobs, Steve
• Kaufman, Ray
• Kilby, Jack
• Kime, Tristan
• Kleinrock, Len
• Komisky, Mark
• Krevor, Larry
• Lancina, Gary
• Levy, Evan
• Licklider, J. C. R.
• Logan, Robert
• Lowe, Bill
• Lowy, Alex
• Malone, Michael S.
• Marconi, Guglielmo
• Mauchly, John
• Maxwell, James Clerk
• McCarter, Jackie
• McCaw, Craig
• Metcalfe, Robert,
• Moore, Gordon
• Morse, Samuel
• Mui, Chunka
• Newcomen, Thomas
• Noyce, Robert
• Ong, Walter J.
• Pennington, Dr. Karen L.
• Pierce, Andrew
• Piot, Jon
• Plato
• Pope Innocent VIII
• Ramsey, Russ
• Redman, Philip
• Roberts, James “JR”
• Roberts, Larry
• Roebuck, John
• Scantlebury, Roger
• Schmelzer, Ronald
• Shapiro, Carl
• Shockley, William
• Tapscott, Don
• Taylor, Bob
• Ticoll, David
• Tomlinson, Ray
• Tong, Leighton
• Turnbull, Laurence
• Uhrmacher, Lisa-Anne
• Valente, Oliver
• Varian, Hal R.
• Warhurst, Peter S.
• Watt, James
• Weber, Betsy
• Wilkes, Maurice V.
• Yefsky, Alan

The Law of Mobility talks about value increasing with mobility. The impact of this law is being felt because the barriers to building mobility in are being obliterated week after week. Here are examples of technology advances enabling this to happen:

• Femtocells
• 1.8″ 64GB SSDs
• GaN HEMTs
• 8MP CMOS
• UMA (a basic introduction)
• 8GB microSDHC
• 3-axis keyboard
• Multi-standard, multi-band mobile TV chipset
• Remote-control help desk agent for smartphones

Full list here.

Research is good. Free highlights from expensive research reports are great. Here are some recent headlines:

• Mobile WiMAX will grab 8% of mobile broadband market by 2012
• Handset sales to reach 1.15B this year
• More than 80% of respondents with handsets that have the ability to play MP3 tracks rarely, if ever, use this feature
• US businesses to spend $9B on mobile applications by 2011
• 82M converged mobile devices to ship in 2011
• 365M smartphones to ship in 2012
• Touch screen sales to double by 2012
• Mobile gaming to reach nearly $10B by 2011
• Nearly half of consumers want WiMax for e-mail
• Femtocell subs to exceed 150M by 2012
• $32B in mobile phone accessory sales in 2007
• Off-portal premium SMS reached $250M in 1Q07
• European M2M market to reach $19.2B by 2011
• 50M combo WiFi/cellular phones supporting SIP to ship by 2011
• $120B in cameraphone sales by 2011
• $9B in mobile business apps by 2011
• Mobile video revenues tripled year-over-year in 1Q07

More and more, the world around us reflects the growing assumption of the law of mobility. Each week we will track indicators of Mobility’s growing importance in our businesses, our lives, and our society:

• Businesses to spend more on wireless than wireline by 2010
• 1B cameraphones
• Americans spend $273M over past year to buy products and services
• iPod accessory makers shift focus to iPhone
• Best Buy Mobile pilot a success
• Mobile gaming revenue increasing 50% in 2007
• 92% believe adding mobile support will improve the service experience
• iPhone rates Jobs town-hall
• Nearly 30M music-phone toting mobilites

Full list here.

Mobility is a wonderful thing. As mobility gets built into all products and services, businesses need to learn how to both capture the power of mobility and manage the dangers introduced through mobility. Here are some examples of how the power of mobility is being applied to create competitive advantage:

• DH Pace mobilizes to improve customer service, efficiency
• Obama launches text campaign
• Chicago Transit Authority adding mobile video monitoring to city buses
• Texting enables mobilization of Chinese middle-class
• Author writes 384-page book on his mobile
• Cisco introduces In-Store Mobility Solutions
• AmberWatch launches child tracking service
• Tennant field service mobility network allows technicians to focus on repairs

Complete list here

Not only is this funny, but it’s informative. Be sure to watch it the whole way through.

You can read the article, but the video is more fun!

As HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Sanyo, and Nokia continue to chase the improvements Apple has introduced to the industry, hopefully their experience in making great phones, combined with the usability expectations that Apple has set in the market will deliver what we all really want!

In order to be winners in the new mobile era, businesses will not only need to capture the power of mobility, but also manage the danger. Highlighted below are recent examples of the danger of mobility and how some firms are beginning to manage it:

• Water
• Cases
• Teenage phone bills
• iPhones
• Distractions
• Stalkers
• Pricing experts
• Help desk headaches

here.