the overcapacity and financial burdens of the telecom companies will have some powerful effects throughout the technology sector.
That's true. I think the earnings reports during the next few quarters will begin to tell the complicated tale of which technology sectors will necessarily shoulder the brunt of the industry capacity adjustments by the carriers and which technology sectors will manage to flourish relatively unscathed.
As you know from annotating different parts of the supply lines over the years, the 3 dimensional chessboard that is technology will always consist of memory, computing and communications. One can classify memory into temporary and permanent memory. One can segment computing into consumer and corporate. One can point to the wireless and wireline nature of the network of networks that is being built.
Anyway, this is an interesting article by Peter Huber at Forbes:
......Most of the growth in digital markets has come in sudden, convulsive spasms, with periods of relative calm in between. Each successive stage of eye-popping growth requires years of incubation, during which hardware and software accumulate and networks form. Then some critical mass is finally reached, a chain reaction begins, and the product or service makes an abrupt transition from techno-curiosity to mass-market necessity. Wall Street overreacts to the quiet interludes just as much as it overreacts to the crescendos. While the technologists calmly play their way through the never-ending symphony, the momentum traders swing from euphoria to despair, and then—count on it—back to euphoria once again........
........Nothing much will happen until some critical mass of users assembles. Then everything will happen fast. We can track the new crowd as it forms. Streaming audio and video require broadband connections to the Web. About 6 million Americans have such connections today, and their ranks are growing fast. Judging from past experience with PCs, cell phones, e-mail and today's graphical Web, it takes about 20 million to reach the tipping point, setting off a shoulder-to-shoulder stampede of consumers and investors. The critical mass of broadband subscribers will be in place some time before the end of 2003. The transition from 20 million to 100 million will then occur before 2010........
forbes.com |
