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Thursday, 29 July 2010 |
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Fortune highlights ten tech trends to bet on
Tuesday, 17 February 2004
Fortune magazine has highlighted ten trends that they feel will be important in the technology field over the next two years. Very few of them offer hope of rapid growth in local IT jobs. This is in contrast to tech trends that were seen as likely to cause growth five years ago.
Fortune sees a bright future for IT. They think that pundits' predictions that the tech industry had matured were off the mark.
"They were wrong," says writer Fred Vogelstein. "Tech doesn't just matter, it's sexier than ever. Stocks have risen so much in the past year that a few market watchers are fretting about a minibubble. It's a tempting comparison, except that this time, what's driving stocks is not euphoria run amok. Buzzwords born in the '90s are maturing into real businesses."
So what does Fortune think will be the most important changes in tech over the next couple of years? I'll give you a brief outline below.
Smart dust
Initially conceived as a defence product, smart dust is ready to go mainstream. "Smart dust" is cheap, low powered computerised sensors that automatically wirelessly network together. They range from pager-sized to chip-sized. The "dust" name is wishful thinking for a future when they shrink even further.
The initial Pentagon thinking was that large numbers of these sensors could be dropped onto a battlefield, where they'd network together and send data on temperature, light, vibration, radiation and toxic chemicals. A computer would then pick up and interpret the data. The network is self-repairing, so if one node fails, others pick up the slack.
Smart dust is expected to become widely used in industry over the next few years, monitoring hotel and factory floors, vineyards, bush fires and even truck tires. As it becomes more pervasive, new software will have to be written to monitor and deal with the resulting data.
Convergence
PCs morphing into TVs, stereos and other household appliances has been talked about for years. It's now happening, and the iPod is leading the charge. HP and Dell now produce and sell flat-screen TVs, and DVRs are growing ever more popular. Silicon Valley sees this as a new profit centre.
China
The US has been setting the standards in IT. Fortune now expects China to take a growing and eventual dominant role in doing so. The country already produces as many engineers and scientists as the US. Their R&D spending is skyrocketing while the US's plateaus. China is actively pursuing a policy of setting standards in everything from operating systems to DVD players and mobile phones. No company can turn their nose up at a billion consumers in the fastest growing market in the world.
Open source
While Linux gains all the headlines, there are over 80,000 open source projects. The software industry is growing increasingly worried about the threat from this trend. Apache now controls 67% of the web-server market and MySQL is a growing threat to big database vendors. Fortune expects the software industry to change profoundly over the next few years because of this.
EBay
Ebay is becoming the commerce platform of the 21st century. Fortune expects the company to grow in revenue and power over the next few years.
Wi-fi
National wireless networks are being built in the US, and access everywhere isn't too far away. This is likely to change the way we use the internet in ways we can only imagine. Much as the mobile phone redefined telecoms, pervasive wireless will change the way we think about information. Expect lots of new and unthought of applications.
We'll certainly be a year or two behind the US on this one, but it will happen here as well.
HDTV
High-definition television is becoming the new broadcasting standard. Foxtel's digital rollout this year will also change the way we watch TV.
Subscription burnout
The number of companies that have a monthly claim on our credit card is exploding. From ADSL, to cable TV, to telephone, to magazine subscriptions; all those bills add up.Fortune thinks a consumer backlash against this increasingly popular pricing model is due.
Telecom incumbents get strangled by VOIP
I covered the threat of Voice-over-IP to the telecom incumbents recently. Fortune thinks the growing popularity of this communication medium will force the incumbents to adopt it. It thinks that they'll do badly though and end up getting strangled by it. Could it be bye-bye Telstra in the fixed-line call business?
Growth in internet advertising
After falling off a cliff following the dot-com bust, internet advertising is becoming popular again. Analysts predict 20% growth in internet advertising this year compared to single digit growth in other media. Google has made the internet seem like a good strategy again, and other companies like Yahoo and MSN are reaping the benefits. Internet ad growth should fund new and innovative websites.
Read the full story in Fortune (subscription required).
Paul Knapp (editor@brainbox.com.au)
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