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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (8183)	9/5/2001 3:37:58 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Maybe the grizzly inards of the telecom gear can be used to make more Japanese bears? nni.nikkei.co.jp QUOTE Wednesday, September 5, 2001 Sony Bullish On Aibo's Robotic Bear Companion TOKYO (Nikkei)--Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc. said Wednesday it will release an ursine counterpart to its Aibo robotic dog on Sept. 22. By upping the cuteness factor of the baby bear, the marketing subsidiary of Sony Corp. (6758) hopes to appeal to more customers. The company expects the cubs will attract female and older consumers to a product category dominated by men over 30. The bears will be priced at 98,000 yen, over 50,000 yen less than the second-generation Aibo dogs. One bear, named Latte, is white and has a calm, quiet character, while the other, Macaron, is gray and is cheerful but naughty. The bears use 15 motors to move their head, limbs and tail. They can also recognize some 75 words, 50% more than their canine counterpart. If an owner tells a cub to "dance, please," it will move rhythmically. Orders will be accepted from Sept. 12 at retailers. (The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Wednesday evening edition) UNQUOTE

To: elmatador who wrote (8183)	9/5/2001 4:59:28 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Respond to of 74559

On the subject of bandwidth - 21.07.01 New Economy - back then and today Lessons from the railway boom in 19. Century. New technologies usually cause an over investment crisis / clearing of the capacities can last several years By Christian Kreiss 7th of December 1835 was an important break-through date. On this day the first German railroad line was opened between Nuernberg to Fuerth. The 100-Gulden-stock of the operating railway company dropped to 80 per cent of the nominal value on the opening day. Only three months later the course had risen to 400 per cent. A lot of new railway companies, that went public during that period in Germany, behaved similarly. When Taunus railway went public in 1837, the stocks had to be assigned in 40:1 proportion, and the price on the opening day went 70% over the nominal value. As late as start of 1844 dozens of offerings of new railway did splendidly and the papers usually met great response in the market . But in the middle of 1845 railway shares broke down; the baisse persisted for three years and led to average price drops of 60 per cent. What people experienced at that time, was according to present state of knowledge one of the first new-Economy crises of history. With the railway a new key technology appeared , that reduced the human and material transport costs by as much as 90 per cent, the transport times shrank up to 95 per cent, one could procure goods in a substantially more reliable fashion and thus plan production better. On top of that the demand pressure of railway companies advanced key technologies: Iron and steel production and mechanical engineering prospered. A fundamental technology, new Economy at that time, provided an unparalleled push for improved overall economic productivity. Several decades of continuous economic recovery resulted. The upswing, however, happened not in a constant fashion, but in cycles. One of the causes for the crash of 1845 and the following recession was the initial over-investment. And this makes the comparison with the today's economic situation and to the new Economy, particularly in the USA, so interesting. Long-term advantages The rapid propagation of the Internet and new communications such as portable radio and glass fiber networks is very much comparable with the building of railways. The transport costs for communication, information and data sink dramatically. Enormous quantities of capital have been invested in shortest time into the new key technologies. 1873 approximately 20 percent of new capital invested since 1835 was tied in railways. The railway investment boom at the beginning of the 1840s sucked up so much cash that there was not enough capital available for other investments. Such key technologies thus hold the risk of initial over-investment, exactly for the reason that they guarantee large long-term advantages. The first railway systems were built so fast that by 1844 the demand could not catch up with supply. The gap between supply and demand opened wide. Quite similar situation today in America: Enormous quantities of capital have been pumped into servers, networks and optical wave guide cables, in other words into very much future-oriented application technologies. Short-term, however, the demand could not keep up with these supply branches. The consequence is a classical over-investment crisis, that is an excessive gap between supply and demand. In the past five years the supply in Europe has not grown by far as strongly, the continent is thus less prone to succumb to an over-investment crisis. How does the future look like? History teaches us that key technologies, which increase the productivity and the prosperity of the population, eventually win on a long-term basis. But growth does not run smoothly. The experiences out of economic history show us, than after almost ten-year continuous upswing in America a shake-out of the over-investments in a form of a weakness phase of six to eight quarters is probable. The investments will be held back in such a way that the demand can gradually adjust to capacities. By now two of these quarters are behind us. Europe has a chance of a latecomer, a known apparition in the economic history. An intelligent latecomer can avoid inevitable errors of the pioneer and for example avoid typical teething problems of the new technologies. The building of railways in Germany from 1835 on is a good example. Germany took over the technique invented in England, tested and improved on it and eventually mutated from a machine and a technology importer into a prominent machine exporter. Dr. Christian Kreiss is a political economist and business historian. In March 2002 he takes over the chair for investment budgeting and profitability calculus at FH Aalen from SZ Nr 166 p 22 translated by DJ PS: Jay's comment about December bottom being a fairy tale - I share his opinion. I'd say "by December we'll be closer to the bottom".

To: elmatador who wrote (8183)	9/5/2001 10:32:01 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Talk about "creative destruction"! -ng- I can't help wondering whether there would have been a "bandwidth glut" if the "last mile" problem had been solved, and how much of the "last mile" problem was due to technology and how much was due to government regulation and how much was due to unwillingness to cooperate in something that was to everyone's mutual advantage? I think there was - and is - consumer demand but after all that money, we still can't get the technology hooked up to our houses. Sad. Reminds me of those "highways to nowhere" that "progressive" governments used to build to show how "progressive" they were - - but this was private enterprise.