The World In Your Pocket

 
Got the market cornered....

Here's an astonishing statistic:

There are now more than 5.9 billion mobile phone subscribers.

Let me repeat that again, this time in bold letters because I think this is so very important:

THERE ARE NOW MORE THAN 5.9 BILLION MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS WORLDWIDE.

This tidbit of information comes from Mobithinking.com, who asks that we credit them.  They deserve it. The numbers are just mind-blowing.

What does this mean?

It means that  you are making TV shows, you already in 6 billion homes. This beats out the Oprah Winfrey Network which is seen by about 20,000 people on any given afternoon. 

It means that if you want to get a message out to people, you don't need to attract them to your website because you are already in their pocket - so to speak.

To me, it means much more. It means that the 'tool' of participation, that is, the way that people can and will interact with the web is already in their hands.  The notion of building a website so that people will come to that website, look at ads there and then go buy stuff is over. 

The phone is clearly much more than a phone.  Personally, I have made and received about a dozen phone calls on my iPhone in the past three years.  But I am online and communicating and interacting on it all the time, and so is everyone else. 

In October, my book, iPhone Millionaire: Six Weeks To Change Your Life (McGraw Hill) is coming out.

There's a reason.  The iPhone is not just a phone - it is a complete video production studio and satellite uplink site and a lot more.  An iPhone is really all you need to create and share video.  It's also all you need to begin to participate in the about to be launched world of live streaming video from anywhyere. Think of the iPhone as the Swiss Army Knife of 21st Century technology.  Like the 'fishin' magician', it does pretty much everything. Soon, as the Japanese and Koreans have already proven, the iPhone will  also be a universal credit card. It's a point of purchase. In short, it is a complete game-changer.  Paying by mobile or mPay is expected to be a $1 trillion business by 2015.  

In the 'old days', the idea was to attract people to your site. They had to go to their computer, turn it on, go online, find your site, watch the ad, go to the store and buy the product.  That's a lot of work.  Now, nearly 6 billion people are instantly conntect all the time.  Your site is already in their pocket.  

If you owned a cable channel, your issue was 'how do I get people to watch my shows on my cable channel'?  As Apple moves into the TV business, this is an increasingly pointless question. The iPhone is already the 'channel' in people's hands. That part is done.  And if you are multiplatformed across Google, Android and iPhone, you are already in 6 billion hands.  What iTunes did to Tower Record Stores, iPhones + video will do to Discovery Networks or The Oprah Winfrey Network.

But mobile opens the door to more than simply passive reception of information - it is the key to a whole new world of user participation and interactivity.  It is this shift, in my opinion - from passive viewer to active participant - putting as much stuff 'into' the system as you take out of it, that is going to be the future of all media. The whole notion of a 'Producer" is going to be archaic.  Who is a 'producer' on Facebook?  Everyone, all the time.  

The person who makes this kind of video-driven interconnectivity possible is going to be the winner.  The seeds for this change are here - they are already in your hands.