It is Monday. New week. New possibilities. Or not? Some reports are predicting the imminent collapse of the mobile industry. Craig Moffett for instance. He is an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. He is afraid that slow growth or decrease in subscriber numbers will tempt mobile operators start price wars. Read it all here.

Then you pick up the Economist and find the opposite view. In the article Boom in the Bust a rosier picture is painted. Slightly simplified; the wireless industry is thriving thanks to it changing structure. 

This is a painfully strong reminder that we should not listen blindly to projections from gurs and analysts. Do your own homework, ask your colleagues, partners and competitors and weigh it all up. Then make sure you run a tight ship so you can pay salaries and bills. Can you chip away a bit on the debt side as well maybe? Well this is not a post on how to manage a business in a recession. It is, as always, my five cents on the mobile web and content industry.

To me much of the data and facts at hand support the view that mobile communications has become a must-have commodity in most markets. In many cases mobile content is a low value purchase. Pricing and total cost of use is becoming more and more transparent. This all works to our favour. Consumers are not that inclined to stop using the mobile services they are used to and like.

On the handset side it is different of course. This is the higher cost item. Prior years race to upgrade phones technically and market it hard to get consumers to upgrade, has made the installed base of handsets pretty high end overall. You do not really need the newest phone to be able to get the most of your mobile life. What you have in your pocket today will do just fine in most cases. Here the handset manufacturer’s success has become their own enemy.

Upgrading your phone today is seen as a pure luxury purchase. Staying in touch, participating in communities, tweeting away as usual, is part of what many consumers are today – a “homo mobilis”. That behaviour will take longer to change. 

Ending note to self: Keep offering great services and invent the next services to delight existing and new users.