If you don’t have a mobile strategy it’s time to get one. Verizon finally opened their eyes to the future and agreed to open up their network. That means any CDMA cell phones (the technical standard Verizon uses) will work, and any application can be uploaded to the phones.

With Sprint and others joining the Google Android (open cell phone software platform) community, and pressure coming with the new spectrum auction from the FCC (where open platform/network is required), cellular carriers need to think differently. Their proprietary world is going to come crashing down. AT&T (Cingular) is still the major hold out, but that will change when Android ships next spring.

So make sure your 2008 budget includes plans for applets, advertising, and communications activities over the mobile medium. You don’t want to miss out on the extraordinary marketing opportunities that will become available.

More on the Verizon announcement here.

Popularity: 18% [?]

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, provides some timely insight.

Bezos comments that “It helps to base your strategy on things that won’t change.”

It took me a moment to consume that idea. I spent over 20 years in the computer industry where all you think about is change, what’s next, and what is everybody else doing. Instead of just asking his team to create the next breakthrough, Bezos asks “What’s not going to change in the next five to ten years?”

“At Amazon we’re always trying to figure that out because you can really spin up flywheels around those things. All the energy you invest in them today will still be paying you dividends ten years from now. Whereas if you base your strategy first and foremost on more transitory things — who your competitors are, what kind of technologies are available and so on — those things are going to change so rapidly that you’re going to change your strategy very rapidly, too.”

Popularity: 19% [?]