It’s been interesting to watch the reaction to Tomi Ahonen’s Mobile the 7th Mass Media post. You either like Tomi’s brash style and bold claims or you don’t. I do. Even if he goes too far, the blog and the book are powerful antidotes to a pervading cloud of negative sentiment - often unsupported by evidence - enveloping the mobile world. A few years back, I was being told that any business plan predicated on smart phones was doomed to failure: Nokia was going to be hammered by the PDA manufacturers. There is no need for further comment - it’s pretty clear who emerged as top dog.
I would not accuse Dean Bubley of negative sentiment - and certainly never of proffering unsupported opinions (the meticulous construction of his arguments makes Dean’s Disruptive Wireless blog a pleasure to read). In his contribution to the debate on Tomi’s post Dean homes in on two potential fallacies concerning the personal nature of mobile communications. First, he points out that it is increasingly hard to define a mobile communications device. While true, this does not in itself depersonalize mobile communication. However, Dean’s second point is potentially more troubling for Tomi’s case. He points out that the one-to-one relationship between SIM, mobile number and identifiable number is breaking down. The seven items of supporting evidence including the blurring of fixed and mobile numbers, the use of SIMs in M2M, mobile devices as gateways and shared devices are at first sight compelling (careful readers will note that Dean’s first point re-emerges as item four).

So where does this leave one-to-one marketing? That depends on the assumed primacy of the SIM in identity management. Even acknowledging that the SIM will continue to play a critical role in identity management, I think its primacy is open to question. Tom Nolle’s notion on individuality is close to the vision behind Calico Jack’s Smart Presence and Context technology. Mobile can still be personal - it just getting a bit harder to do.