The first half of the book is full of interesting back stories on the evolution of key enablers such as Lithium Ion batteries, flash memory and touch screen technologies. Saylor provides loads of examples of how mobile technologies could potentially alter consumer expectations from products such as a car or house key. Keys could become configurable devices distributed via mobile phones with access rights turned on or off automatically based upon identity and environmental factors. He also illustrates how businesses could attack some of their greatest challenges with location-based advertising to mobile devices. For example, a movie theater could offer promotions to passersby when its seats are half empty to improve inventory utilization.
The second half of the book features some great visions for how health care and educational systems can be improved with mobile technologies. I could debate that many of these changes are really more the result of a range of emerging technologies rather than being largely enabled by smartphones or 3G/4G networks. Chapter 9 was my favor of the book in which Saylor describes how the arrival of mobile phones is revolutionizing the agrarian economies of India and Sub-Saharan Africa introducing new insurance, lending and supply chain models that were never before possible.
Although Saylor certainly brings some new perspectives, I suspect that the best way I can describe this book is that it reads like an updated version of Thomas Freedman's "The World is Flat" from a decade or so ago.
