After the dot com bust the conventional wisdom was that tech was washed up. The big buyers were gone. No more $12 per click on web sites. No more IT infrastructure spends. No more big investment opportunities.
And then came Google’s 10x cheaper search ads. And then came Apple with its psuedo inexpensive consumer-focused iPod offerings. And then grew Google and MySpace and overnight efforts like YouTube. My, the world has changed.
What’s fascinating to me is how the success of these later efforts all grew during an economic lull.
So as we teeter on the brink of a recession here in the US, I’m wondering where things might be going next.
Will government efforts keep us through like we saw in the early 80s? Will the consumer and small businesses crank the economy along as they did after the dot com bust? Or will IT spending keep chugging away as enterprises try to cut their costs by moving to the Internet?
Not being very good at predicting the future, I’m going to pick the consumer in part because consumer spending can continue to benefit from the cost reduction and exposure of new products in the Asian markets. Given Apple’s propensity for focusing on consumer trends, this bodes well for Apple. If the costs are incremental enough, Apple probably will probably be able to keep a good thing going.
I also think Google–if they repeat their DNA of providing 10x cost reduction innovations–will fare quite well, because I think we’ll see more and more enterprises try to cut costs by moving to the Net, thereby effectively outsourcing and reducing tech management overhead. Likewise, as big expenditures will become capped, this means smaller departnamental purchases will become the norm and this again will play into the hands of individuals innovating by moving their department’s content and tools online thereby taking advantage of new communication and management efficiencies.
How will Adobe or Microsoft benefit? I’m guessing they will continue to solidify their strengths at the governmental levels, but that’s just a guess. They both will become standards.
Sun will strike to shine in all things Java, but against Adobe and Microsoft’s efforts I just don’t see it happening. I’ve been wrong about Sun’s demise for awhile though.
And then there’s the whole phone/communication thing going on. Might we see that the next big OS not be a desktop OS at all? I think so. Whether it’s Apple’s embedded OS X, or Google’s Android, or Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, or some other player, we’re going to see the crossover soon to these smaller OSes in part because the communication capabilities are so crucial to us, in part because Intel has hit a single-chip performane lull, and also because they will be at the one price point we can all afford during a recession. I’d put MIDs and low-cost PCs in this category too as beneficiaries of a tighter economy. There may be no better time than now for Google to introduce a very low-cost PC running Android, for instance.
Of course, I was wrong thinking that the economy was not going to faulter as much as it has. And I’ve been wrong about the success of various companies over the years. So don’t listen to me. However, I can’t help but ponder a bit about what this all might mean. What’s your take?