I know its mostly a loyal passionate readership, and the big interest and focus continues to be the smartphone races, especially Apple iPhone, Nokia, Microsoft, Windows, Android and Samsung fans and followers, with of course the other brands thrown in.
This blog was set up by Alan Moore and me to connect with readers of our books, in particular Communities Dominate Brands, the signature book for this blog, 8 years ago. I am so delighted to discover that people new to the book still find it exceptionally insightful and helpful - as the world's first business book on social media, after all, all the user-generated stuff and citizen journalism and all that. But obviously after Alan reduced his involvement in writing to this blog some years back, my focus has shifted ever more to my core competence, mobile, at the expense of social media topics.
I try to write broadly, and in mobile, to cover topics as wide as mobile money and SMS text messaging and m-education etc, but most of the hottest news the past three years has been - as I predicted - the heating war around smarpthones. When we started this blog, only 7 of the Global Fortune 500 companies were smarpthone makers. Today well over 20 of the biggest companies on the planet are fighting in this smartphone bloodbath - literally the most competitive global industry ever seen in human history. Smartphones turned near-bankruptcy Apple Computer into a 'mobile company' and the biggest profits of any company ever. Sony the biggest home electronics maker says mobile is 'front and center' of its future. Google the world's biggest internet company says the future of the internet is mobile as says Facebook the biggest social media company. Samsung the world's biggest tech company says mobile is central to its future, as says Intel the biggest chip maker and so said in the past Microsoft too, the biggest software company (not sure about the future now, with Bill Gates finding Microsoft's mobile strategy to have been a mistake). The BBC says all broadcast content will be on mobile, Electronic Arts says mobile is future of gaming, Warner Music says wireless is future of music and get this, Visa says mobile is the future of payments. Yes, money! Already 48% of Kenya's total GDP transits mobile phone based payments. Yes, 48% of the total Kenyan economy now goes through mobile.
I thought year 2010 would be the year of the Bloodbath (and it was bloody), then year 2011 was going to be Year 2, the Electric Boogaloo (And it was bloodier still). I thought we'd see the end of the big smartphone wars in its year three, Digital Jamboree in 2012, and was predicting last autumn that this topic would be boring by now, Spring 2013, as the battle was going to be mostly settled as this end of 2012 picture was forming and our big winners seemed clear.
Only now, to find that we have all these big brands getting into it at the OS level, with Mozilla Firefox, Samsung Tizen, LG-Palm, all vying to become the 'real' third ecosystem behind Google's Android and Apple's iPhone. Microsoft's Windows Phone will try to fight back, Blackberry's BB10 gives the Canadian business phone maker new life, and smaller players like Jolla's Sailfish and Ubuntu are also trying to climb into the race. And who knows, if the Nokia Board finally wake up and fire Elop, they would still own the rights to MeeGo, their 'next generation' OS they developed to replace Symbian, which powers some superb smartphones like the N9 and N950, and which had a broad manufacturer base to support it and could maybe be revived - even MeeGo powered laptops/netbooks had been launched such as the one by Fujitsu. Suddenly we have a lot more to monitor in this space. And I now am looking at this being the Bloodbath Year 4 - Smartphones Galore.
So I will continue blogging here, with my rambling long blogs (and until Elop is fired for incompetence, will of course rant from time to time begging him to be fired). I will monitor other developments in the mobile space and blog about those, and when my mood so hits me, look at other tech like say Augmented Reality. And on my occasional peculiarities, I will have coming in the near future also my review of Skyfall (I do want to let everyone who was interested have their chance to go see it, for my review here will be somewhat of a plot 'spoiler' so I don't want to ruin your 007 experience haha). I also have some cool pix coming at some point about a peculiar hobby I have relating to my alter-ego, Bond, James Bond. I will keep publishing industry stats here - many that you can't find anywhere else. And I will occasionally write just silly stuff that pops into my head. I am an unstoppable grumpy old man, nobody tells me to shut up haha, and this is my blog, my rules, my topics and my rants..
If you readers keep coming back and reading this blog, and keep leaving comments, I will keep writing more for you here. As always, this blog will never have ads (I get those offers ever week, I reject them of course) and I will not make you register and I won't harvest your email. This blog is not for sale, won't be for sale. This is only for us - you and me - to connect. I love my job, I get to live the life of the Digital Gypsy, the James Bond lifestyle (without quite the same level of the killing and explosions) and this blog is my digital home. Yes, I spend a lot of time on Twitter too, but this is where you find Tomi Ahonen raw and uncensorred what I think, what I really-really think..
Thank you for visiting this blog and please do come back. If you feel so inclined, from time to time, post your comment here, and if you want to get in touch with me, drop me an email to tomi at tomiahonen dot com. Four million visitors in eight years. I never ever EVER would have thought that possible. Thank you all.
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