Russ McGuire is the VP of Strategy at Sprint Nextel and the author of the Power of Mobility. I've visited his blog McGuire's Law several times but somehow never picked up on the small print right there on his blog masthead - what is McGuire's Law? It says "The value of any product or service increases with its mobility." This is a very profound insight and a great law. Probably whatever you can think of, if we can mobilize it, you get more value out of it. And that is particularly relevant in the mass media space, thinking of mobile as the 7th mass media channel - yes, mobility adds to the value of media consumption. It is not the only mass media that is portable or movable - we can carry our books, magazines and newspapers around. Radios tend to be portable - we have them in our cars. Many recorded media players are portable, from the CD player in the car to our iPods. But TV tends not to be portable (until we have it on our phone ha-ha).
Its why we would not be willing to pay two dollars for a tiny snippet of a song, that we only could play at our home stereo. But we're happy to pay that for what we call a "ringing tone" and we play on our phone - so the song - and thus a random public playing of it - tells the world of what style of music (and the artist) we like. Mobility adds value. We are not willing to pay much of anything for our emails. But add in total mobility (out of SMS text messaging) and we get a 100 billion dollar global industry. Mobility adds value. The price of our voice minutes are crashing - due to Skype etc - but we are quite willing to pay 10 cents per minute (or more) on our mobile phone - not on our home phone. And when we add international mobility - roaming of our services - we are willing to put up with even greater charges - as mobility adds value. I am quite willing to pay 30 cents or 50 cents per minute on my international calls - if it is an important work-related issue and I really do need to be reached - or I need to reach someone.
Great thought - McGuire's Law - The value of any product or services increases with its mobility.
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