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Ten Top Trends - 2003 from Red Herring
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 08 Dec 2002 10:41:00 -0500
The December "Red Herring" forecasts what will be the top ten trends next year. The San Jose Mercury News editorially opines that it will take the "next big thing" - like the PC or the Internet - to keep jobs from continuing to migrate to wherever they can be performed at lowest cost. Which of these trends (if any) will be the next big thing? 1- Wireless local area networks (wi-fi - IEEE Std. 802.11) will be rolled out by major international wireless carriers, competing with 3G. Free service will be available from 'hot spots' - piggybacking on others' service (there are 143 hot spots in San Francisco, 88 in New York44 in San Jose, and 38 in Orlando. 2- Virtualization - a seamless corporate IT infrastructure will be all the rage for CIOs worldwide, a promising hardware/software market for those with small commodity products, and perhaps Sun, if N-1 succeeds. 3- Venture capital won't disappear - but the level will go back to 1990. A tough year for startups, since most of the $100 billion investment expected will go into late-stage companies, spin-offs, and public companies. 4- New specialized chips will protect networks and devices. Security breaches are estimated to have cost $1.7 billion since 9-11-01. Chip hardware will be less vulnerable than software. 5- Nanotechnology will see slow commercialization; a backlash will slow the pace and spawn a new discipline: nanoethics. 6- Financial reporting will include stock options as expenses, a near-term disaster for reported earnings, but companies and investors will adjust, long-term. 7- Bankruptcies will accelerate in telecommunications, as the lease price for E-1 (European equivalent of T-1, at 2 Mbps) lines drops from $10,000 per month in 1999 to under $1000 per month in 2003. 8- Biotechnology will benefit from the fight against bioterrorism. In about 5 years, bioterror will rank as a public health concern alongside AIDS, cancer, and heart disease. 9- Digital radio broadcasting will take off, starting a 10-15 year transition to all digital radio all the time. 10- Broadband will become the purview of cable companies, with twice the potential customers as the Baby Bells' DSL. The pricing will shift to bandwidth sensitive - cheaper for e-mail than for Web browsing. Cable TV will also expand video on demand. Personal Video Recorder functions will be included in set-top boxes. Voice over cable will expand, taking traffic from the switched telephone network (now, only AT&T Broadband and Cox offer it). ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To unsubscribe or update your address, click http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Ten Top Trends - 2003 from Red Herring Dave Farber (Dec 08)