Book review: The Fifth Wave

Book review: The Fifth Wave - a strategic vision for mobile internet innovation, investment & return

Authors: Robert Marcus & Collins Hemingway

The fifth wave of computing – which is the mobile internet – is a tsunami, according to the authors of this book. Apparently, the convergence of mobile networks and devices with the internet access creates a near-universal market of six billion users and generates $2.5 trillion in annual economic value. Yet it has barely begun to gather force. This book aims to explain this technological revolution and how it will radically alter life, society, and commerce. And we are giving away ten copies of this ebook.

The Fifth Wave covers: -

• The Connected Generation. Citizens of the ageless, nationless Global Village, whose embrace of mobile technologies is changing every social, commercial and political relationship, forever.

• The Democratisation of Innovation. The decentralization of power away from closed systems and organisations, including Silicon Valley itself, distributing innovation to new technology hubs around the globe.

• The Four C’s: – Communication, Content, Community, and Commerce. The activities and commercial applications of the more than six billion mobile internet users -restructuring every market and remaking every business.

• The Mobile Internet Genome. A lingua franca, a technology classification system, and the analytical tool that innovators and investors need in order to understand, value and manage this new class of strategic asset.

• Mobile Presence. A quality, not a technology; the principal monetization mechanism for the mobile internet, a form of ‘always-on’ autonomous search, intelligently managing the flow of our communications, content, and commercial transactions.

The authors claim that the mobile internet is going to change more lives; create more wealth; destroy more businesses; and upend more political systems than any force in history.

Here’s the controversial bit. The authors claim that this is the first in-depth analysis of the IPO debacle by Facebook and other mispriced firms.

It also aims to illustrate what these incidents say about the lack of understanding of value in this new and uncertain market space.

Now Quantumwave Capital - the company behind this project,  is obviously a company which eats its own cooking.

You wouldn’t expect it to publish on paper, would you? So the ebook is in Amazon’s Kindle format.

However, the authors point out that it can be read on practically any device because Amazon offers a Kindle reader for iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Windows Phone 7, PC, and Mac.

Shame I haven’t worked out a way to read this ebook on a BlackBerry PlayBook yet. Any suggestions?

When it comes to the authors, Robert Marcus is CEO of QuantumWave Capital, a boutique investment bank specializing in the mobile internet.

Co-author, Collins Hemingway is best known for partnering with Microsoft’s Bill Gates to co-author the Number 1 best-selling book #Business @ the Speed of Thought’.

Initially, GoMobile News will be giving away 10 free copies of this ebook.

To win a copy of this book, all you have to do is email competition@gomobilenews.com.

Next supply your full name: sex; email address; job title and the company or organisation which connects you to the mobile/cellular industry. Plus your preference of country (for Amazon).

The judges decision will be final. Closing date is 22nd November 2012.

The information supplied by entrants will only be utilised by Dollargate Publishing (which runs GoMo News) and the book’s authors.

It won’t be sold on to any other body or organisation. If you can’t locate the book any other way try visiting Amazon here.