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« For Your Eyes Only - the three levels of customer behavior based data | Main | Don't Go for the Fool's Gold in Mobile. There is Real Gold for you »

March 11, 2010

Carlos Slim: World's richest person - made his money with.. mobile

Yeah.. Told-you-so haha, We promised here at this blog that the next billionaires are coming from mobile - in my roadmap to your personal career success 'the Digital Klondyke inside the Cyber Eldorado' from last year. Now Forbes has counted the richest people and the old regular Bill Gates from the PC industry is no longer top dog. Today the richest person on the planet is Carlos Slim from Mexico, whose company America Movil, based out of Mexico, owns several mobile operators in Latin America (and he also owns a fixed line operator in Mexico). Most of his money was made in mobile. And very interestingly, his billions were earned in the Emerging Market worlds - certainly a first for a world's richest person - to earn all his money not in the wealthy West but in the Developing World part of the planet. Congratulations!

A bit on the background. You probably have not heard of America Movil, its brand in Mexico is Telcel and it was part of Telmex. Then rest of America Movil's affiliates are all in Latin America. How big are they? Try fourth largest mobile operator group in the ..world. Yes, that big. Neck-to-neck with Spanish-based Telefonica Group (ie owners of O2 in Britain for example) fighting for third biggest (China Mobile and Vodafone Group are the 2 biggest) and America Movil is ahead of such more familiar global giants as Telenor, T-Mobile, Singtel and Orange. America Movil is twice as large in total subscribers as the biggest US based mobile operator/group ie AT&T Wireless. Twice as big as.. Yes, that big.

And do they make any money as an operation? You may recall that America Movil was one of the Top 25 of my Ahonen Index of the world's largest mobile industry companies, when ranked by only their mobile-related revenues. While serving customers in the relatively poor markets of Latin America, the group earned 31 billion dollars out of their mobile arm and that ranks them 13th biggest mobile industry player globally. So who says mobile is 'near saturation' eh? Who says you can't make money with mobile in the Emerging World markets? Who says basic voice calls and SMS text messages cannot generate billions? The world's richest man did not get there by developing iPhone Apps haha, and is laughing his way all the way to the bank. You may want to go re-read that article I wrote about how to make a career in mobile (and make tons of money in it too).

Posted by at 04:25 AM in 7th Mass Media, Carriers / Operators, Emerging World, Revenues, Statistics, Strategy |

Comments

Peter

Carlos Slim is definitely old school. He’s of the tried and true “guerrilla billionaire” strategy: buy lots of businesses and either keep them for the cash flow or fix ‘em up and sell them. The goal is to make money off a lot of deals instead of a killing on just one.

Posted by: Peter | March 14, 2010 at 12:07 AM

Tomi T Ahonen

Hi Peter

Yeah, haha, old school indeed. And done very well for himself..

Cheers

Tomi Ahonen :-)

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    Tomi Ahonen is a bestselling author whose twelve books on mobile have already been referenced in over 100 books by his peers. Rated the most influential expert in mobile by Forbes in December 2011, Tomi speaks regularly at conferences doing about 20 public speakerships annually. With over 250 public speaking engagements, Tomi been seen by a cumulative audience of over 100,000 people on all six inhabited continents. The former Nokia executive has run a consulting practise on digital convergence, interactive media, engagement marketing, high tech and next generation mobile. Tomi is currently based out of Helsinki but supports Fortune 500 sized companies across the globe. His reference client list includes Axiata, Bank of America, BBC, BNP Paribas, China Mobile, Emap, Ericsson, Google, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC, IBM, Intel, LG, MTS, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Ogilvy, Orange, RIM, Sanomamedia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Three, Tigo, Vodafone, etc. To see his full bio and his books, visit www.tomiahonen.com Tomi Ahonen lectures at Oxford University's short courses on next generation mobile and digital convergence. Follow him on Twitter as @tomiahonen. Tomi also has a Facebook and Linked In page under his own name. He is available for consulting, speaking engagements and as expert witness, please write to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com

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