BGR:
The proof will be in the pudding.
1. Broadband in what? That covers a lot of territory. If you mean on the net, I would have to say minor impact. While the net is very useful to "info hounds" as are found on SI, a large portion of the population has next to no interest in the net. They tried it and found it "boring". There is a lot of hype about the net, but it is an adjunct, not a replacement form of communicating. Incidentally, try to picture the net AFTER the market has been crushed and all those e-bananas and day traders have been swept out to sea,....it may be a much lonelier place, as they account for much of the net useage. I'm expecting to see an entire generation emerge that hates stocks and wants nothing more to do with them. (understandable once they've lost everything)
2. RDRAM is about to be seen as a DOA situation. Check out DDR. Almost as fast, addresses current PC standards, does not require massive new expenditures to produce (especially test equipment)and much better yields. There's a joke out there among the Dram producers,...."INTC,...SHOW ME THE BUYERS". They don't see it and neither do I. RDRAM is effective only in conjunction with the high performance micros. For Intel it may prove to be a billion dollar boondoggle.
3.I'm a ham. We've messed with video telephony for years. Bluntly it's boring. Talking heads.
4. Does anyone other than a marketing madman care about this?
5 See above
6. When your currency has been smashed, and your stock market has been trashed, you revert to survival thinking. Scratch most of Asia, Russia, etc as buyers of products that are not essential to survival. China is a mess that keeps getting messier. Those middle classes that you mention have been traumatized by events of the last two years. Incidentally, the deflationary wave that flattened those unfortunate people is rolling across Latin America and is heading North. Heads in sand won't stop it.
None of these items are going to do it in the near term in my opinion.
Best, Earlie
|
