My sixth book, 7th Media, is ready. Taking pre-orders at publisher Futuretext

I am very proud to announce my sixth book, the eagerly-awaited treatise on mobile phones as the newest of the mass media. The 322 page hardcover book is entitled Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, and subtitled Cellphone, Cameraphone, iPhone, Smartphone - is what many of our readers have seen me speak about during the past two years, and obviously both Alan and me often blog about here - about how the cellular phone is now the newest mass media. Not the dumb little sister of the internet, not the clumsy cousin of the personal computer, not the tiny screen crippled kid sibling of television - but rather, mobile is as much more potent as a media channel than its predecessor the internet, as TV was more potent as a media than its predecessor, radio.

The book has 18 chapters including several on mobile phone customer behaviour; chapters each on the major content categories such as music, gaming, television, advertising etc; and of course it is packed with up-to-the-minute statistics and real world examples. The book has 16 case studies from the most innovative countries in the mobile space, such as Finland, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong etc. The case studies include just about every one of the most innovative companies and services in the mobile space that we discuss regularly at this blog, such as Flirtomatic, Blyk, MyNuMo, Cyworld, SeeMeTV, Super Stable, Kamera Jiten, Airline mobile check-in, Mice Love Rice, Pop Kids, Just-in-time Dentist, Virgin MVNO etc etc etc.

If you are curious about the mobile industry and how it may impact your life - such as why Barack Obama is right now making such great use of SMS text messaging and Twitter to connect with the youth and gaining new evangelists to his cause; or if you are in the media or advertising space, look at the iPhone and wonder how that will change your career and the lives of your audiences; or if you're someone in the telecoms space, unsure what 3G may bring (and not bring), this is the book to read right now.

I wrote this book alone, as this was more a mobile telecoms book than a marketing/convergence book like my previous two books, Communities Dominate Brands with Alan Moore, and Digital Korea with Jim O'Reilly. But rest assured, as you can see from our collaboration here with Alan, his thoughts are frequently quoted throughout the book. And the foreword? I am very proud to have Pekka Ala-Pietila, the Chairman of Blyk and past president of Nokia who wrote the kind foreword to the book.

The book is priced to sell, 322 pages hard cover, and only 20 UK Pounds (30 Euros, 40 US Dollars) and taking orders now for first deliveries shortly. Please go to the futuretext website now to place your order. The link is http://mobile7th.futuretext.com/

Of course the book will soon also appear on Amazon sites and be available through major booksellers. As with my previous two books, I have a pdf file of an excerpt of the book, including a full chapter, the Foreword and a complete case study (plus table of contents etc) that you can read to sample the book. If you write to me at  tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com, then I will send you the pdf file in return email.

I will be posting some updates of the book so you'll get to read more about it and also the first opinions as they come in. But yes, this is my book on what makes mobile unique. If you like what I've written about mobile telecoms on this blogsite, you will love the book.

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