The majority of mobile subscribers in Europe has a prepaid mobile account - as opposed to mostly underbanked customers having prepaid accounts here in the U.S. As much as it is a coincidence or prescient segmentation, the majority of first general MVNO (or just sub-brands like Boost) here in the US are prepaid focused giving the MVNO market an apparent high growth trajectory where it was really “prepaid” that was driving growth in the US. (confounding variable)

As a result, most of the second generation MVNO did not fare too well given that the prepaid market is beginning to saturate like the post paid (Disney, ESPN, AMP’d, Helio and a dozen more). Some are still hanging on through technical innovation and blanket mass marketing (AMP’d + Helio) . . . but steadfastly refusing to release sub #’s.

Well . . . long story short. . . easyMobile, the MVNO of the Richard Bronson wanna be, Stelio (first name only, like Madonna), is about to fold after only acquiring 80K customers (another rule of thumb for me, you gotta have user # higher than the total people in any given superbowl to be considered “impressive” growth).

This is scary given the amount of runway left for mobile innovation is unlimited, but MVNO’s who can potentially push incumbents forward are fading like flies. As a result, the “walled garden” of the mobile platforms might persist much longer than the IBM monopoly on the PC BIOS (the last time the PC platform was “closed”).

It used to be that economies of scale in the mobile business comes in the capex (network buildout, spectrum acquisition); right now it looks like economies of scale in distribution & marketing is equally big too . . .

Only companies that has already achieved economies of scale in marketing and distribution can really leverage the MVNO model to some degrees of success . . . (read Apple). . . lets hope

SAN FRANCISCO - Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94.

Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.

“Milton’s passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know,” said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation’s president and CEO, in a statement. “His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike.”

From the AP press.

When I was an undergrad at Stanford, Milton Friedman came to speak on campus. Of all my 4 years there only Jesse Jackson (at the peak of his popularity) out drew Milton. At an ultra liberal (which college is not?) campus like Stanford, this is a feat in of itself.

To me, he is the progenitor of “market-based socialism” (I’ll get hanged by Friedman scholars for this) . . . and direct influencer of the current community driven web 2.0 vision. Essentially, he argued that personal choice (include greed) will drive toward a better society. That there is nothing in conflict between capitalism, self preservation and public good. . . (how 2.0!) Far from a Reagan apologist, he argued for those on the wrong end of the bell curve as much as he did for the middle class. He is the greatest economist of our times; if not, the most influential to the cause . . .