Bob Cringley’s predictions are always interesting to watch. This year instead of sky coming to earth kind of predictions (when Intel Mac deal was announced , he expected intel to buy apple– this time around, he is making some reasonably doable set of predictions. He predicts that home users will find this an exciting time, with new products and services galore, while business users - especially BIG business users - will have to suffer with the breakdown of traditional suppliers and with inevitable consolidation problems as their list of suppliers shrinks and product lines are merged. Some of his other predictions look very interesting and are most likely to happen (I have excluded a majority that I do not agree /feel confident about:
From Apple:
A. More announcements – bunch of media content deals, a huge expansion of .Mac to one TERABYTE per month of download capacity per user, a new version of the Front Row DVR application, and Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options - literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too.
B. Make some inroads into WINTEL market. Intel Mac + XP may become official and Apple may provide OSX for generic intel platforms with support structured along opensource movement like frameworks - offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages - a web site, forums, download section and a wiki. While on this topic, do not miss this well researched perspective, as to how different are Intel-Macs from Intel PCs & this perspective as well.
From Google:
A. A supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
B. Google won’t go head-to-head with Microsoft with a desktop O/S or a cheap PC.
From Microsoft:
A. In 2006, Windows XP gets another service pack and/or facelift. Nothing more. Vista release may be delayed by one more year.
He also predicts that TiVO may be taken over - a distinct possibiltiy.By the way, he scored above average for his 2005 predcitions. Why is Bob so watched in the industry - my take, he is among the few who understand the convergene market and its impact and he thinks very differently and can make calls which are non-conventional and reason it out well enough.He also very correctly makes an interesting point this time –while discussing AppleVs Burst,he highlights that (last year it was MicrosoftVs Burst), big companies are only concerned about their patents and associated rights and takes patent rights of startups for granted.
|
