Paul: couple of notes to your post:
>In reality, the IRS has just cancelled plans for allowing individuals
>to file their tax returns directly via computer to the IRS - so mass
>deployment of PCs is certainly not a priority of the US government.
There's a saying I love -- "I'd rather my enemy be malicious than stupid -- because stupidity knows no bounds". With this said, my understanding of the reason the IRS canceled this wasn't the priority of the project but rather the fact that someone (the GAO?) reviewed what they were doing and found that it wouldn't work well.
The theory of the IRS was that they'd save money doing this -- even if a very few taxpayers filed using this mechanism.
>To address my other point - Intel and Microsoft are supported by
>legions of hardware vendors and software vendors, all pushing
>the envelope of technology that in turn provides new and seful
>applications for computers. These "legions" help expand the market.
I fully agree with this. Everytime someone tells me how great Java is I know that the person telling me that doesn't understand development -- because what makes C++ so great isn't the language but rather the tools I can buy with it.
So what I think you're saying is "...more than price matters...". Okay -- got it -- and I totally believe you. The question which remains on the table is how do you address more than 30%-40% of the U.S. market at the current price points -- no matter how great the applications are? I'd submit that you can't do it -- and because of that there will be some computer-enabled device in the home in the next 10 years or so that will have low incremental cost to the consumer and will enable them to do some types of information processing with a degree of interactivity. Of course, that interactivity may be only slightly more than you get today with a remote control -- but I'm simply positing that it will be there.
>How many add-ons do you see for the Sony Playstation? Or >Nintendo's Game Boy? These are mostly single function machines. >Hundreds of bucks for single functions.
Very, very, very few add-on's. As someone else noted, however, there are startups today working on this problem. What attracts these startups? The fact that you can buy a fairly heavy-duty computing platform for $199 new and then build software on that platform and (theoretically) sell it. Since software has a very low marginal cost past the initial development, these folks see the potential for a higher-volume market than they can get with the PC.
Will they suceed? I don't know. I do know that the folks pushing the X-terminal a few years back, and the folks pushing the NC today, and the folks pushing WebTV and PlayStation and the like today aren't stupid -- the reason they're doing it is to try to make money in a market which doesn't exist yet -- and it's the very fact that they'd be creating the market which is so appealing to them (coupled with the fact that the market would be very high volume).
>The PC has proven itself time and again to be the ltimate
>Chameleon - it continually changes and adapts as new markets
>develop and new applications come forward. Hardware additions
>improve and add new functionality all of the time. Software
>continually evolves to provide more applications for this new
>hardware. This becomes a symbiotic process. And the platform that
>gets all this hardware/software support is the BIG ONE - PCs with
> intel inside.
Respectfully, after reading this, I wanted to say "forever and ever, amen". Hey -- I own a lot of Intel stock -- and have for some time -- and I ***hope*** that this is the way it goes.
However, it's doubtful that this statement will hold true forever. If we can agree that it won't hold true in the year 999999999, then we can begin to discuss what's important -- when will the technology S-curve of the PC (note: not the microprocessor, but the PC) reach a point that makes it succeptable to attack from another technology.
If the answer is that the PC will simply change itself to something else and thus the S-curve doesn't apply, then -- hey, I'll buy that concept. So here's the thing -- will what the PC changes to, whenever it does change (in a chamelion-like fashion), include Intel microprocessors and Microsoft software.
Certainly Oracle and others desparately are trying to define a platform to hurt Microsoft. Intel's biggest enemy (and best friend, of course) in this is Microsoft -- who just announced Windows on Windows-like technology for 32-bit RISC emulation in an alpha review.
So we come back to the central question: assuming that the PC will adapt in some fashion to a price point that allows it to penetrate 90% or more of U.S. homes, what is Intel doing to ensure that it will be in that type of PC and will maintain or increase the monopoly that they have in the current market such that they dominate this new 90% market?
Mark |
