Telepocalypse

Book review: Open Gardens

My beach reading last week was Open Gardens: The innovator’s guide to the mobile data industry by Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish, two experienced figures in the industry. They have a website to support and sell the book.

Who it’s for: Anyone building or financing the creation of mobile data applications.

What it’s about: Everything you need to know about getting an application to market and having more than an icecream in Hell’s chance of making money.

What I liked: Comprehensive scope and business awareness. The bits about application trends (from content-centric towards contact-centric) and the insights into the operator mindset are worth the cover price alone. I grinned reading the tales of how the different parts of a mobile operator think differently (network, biz dev/marketing, developer program) and frequently clash. Some great checklists. The whole thing is built on hard experience, so an ounce of practical wisdom is worth a ton of theory.

What I disliked: Totally data-centric, and rather neglects the interation with voice. Doesn’t explicitly bring out the likely impacts of social networking, presence. Somewhat weak and wishful at the end in proposing new unified intermediaty layer to reduce costs of application development and distribution. A few sections (like on m-commerce and payments) could have done with being fleshed out by a topic expert. Needed an editor.

Gripes: Good typography and an index shouldn’t be such a stretch, even for a boutique publication.

Verdict: Strongly recommended to target audience, but only of passing interest to the lay reader with a general interest in technology and telecom. There’s still a more general book to be written about the economics of closed and open technology ecosystems.

I think I’ve got all the sand out of the spine now.