Ten predictions for 2008
Some might even come true
10. A new boss and maybe an buyer for AMD. Down Sunnyvale way, 2007 was
an annus horribilis: not only did the chip maker screw up anything it touched
this year but it also lost the credibility it had built up over the last few
years. Although it's not quite back to square one, AMD took a heavy tumble and
regained some of its former reputation for laughable over-promising and
under-delivering. Bullish forecasts mean that AMD might yet find a new nadir but
core technologies remain prized assets and will be desirable to predators.
What’s not clear is how the United States would cope with a foreign buyer for a
big native chip firm.
9. The 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA web goes free. The tenner-a-month 3/3.5G deal
from 3 late in 2007 suggests that mobile web connectivity is heading the way
that dial-up did in the mid-90s. It’s not fast enough or reliable enough to
hurt Wi-fi but giveaway
mobile tariffs could be a useful tactic in multi-play packages.
8. Boredom with green computing issues to set in. The current claims are too absurd to be sustained and there is no sign of a decent benchmark. PR went into overdrive in 2007 and we’re all just going to use a bit of common sense in 2008.
7. The death of the ipod. Suddenly, standalone music players look like standalone PDAs did circa 2000. In 2008, they’ll be relegated to giveaway status, like memory sticks.
6. Sideshow notebooks to finally arrive. Auxiliary panels
have flopped so far but the signs are that Asia has these lined up for a push in
2008 as Microsoft gets its way and more of us sign up for post-SP Vista.
5. Cloud computing won’t take off. The Red Hat/Amazon deal was very
interesting, but you go first.
4. Music labels leave old DRM town. With Warner leaving yesterday, there’s not much propping-up of this house of cards.
3. The Internet won’t slow down. Like Moore’s Law, there’s too much at stake for repeated predictions to come true.
2. M&A will slow down. Oracle and IBM have already got
the low-hanging fruit in enterprise software and a lot of what is unconsolidated
will look even less attractive in the event of an economic slowdown. RIM won’t
sell to Microsoft. OK, so Palm may go, as will anybody private and VC-backed in
virtualisation, and
maybe one of the big Internet properties will sell, but the chaos of the last
year will go.
1. Virtualisation on the desktop won’t go mainstream. The geeks who love it overestimate the chances of it having a more general appeal. µ
Comments
Green IT
One thing that will not die about "Green IT". We always want more bang for the dollar. That is a green concept that is aligned with greed and lust for power. The trend to 64bit and multiple cores gives everyone more bang for the dollar but it is absolutely silly to seek 64 cores on every workstation. That extends waste of resources. It is not silly to use that technology on servers which can be kept running near capacity for maximum return on investment. To really benefit from multiple cores both to reduce waste and to get more bang for the dollar, we have to go to thin client technology as the norm, not as an exception. The same technology that can put umpteen cores on a chip can put one very low-power core on a chip to make the ideal thin client:speed, even under-clocked, low power consumption and fanless. Expect to see a huge ramp up in use of thin clients in 2008 to get the most bang for the dollar and to save the planet.2007?
Did you write one of these in 2007? Did I miss the reflection on what came to be from it? Just a thought.Also on #1, virtualization reminds me of people like me who used to run multiple processors in their personal machines before anyone even knew what to really do with one. Now everyone has multiple cores. I see virtualization ending up in the same kind of boat 5-10 years down the road. Everyone has it, but no one really cares. It will just become the norm. Each app running in a seperate vm within the OS invisible to the user.
What!?
No mention that Duke Nukem forever will actually get released!?I know its not gonna happen but its only a prediction ;)
...
My prediction of an Apple branded version of the Asus EEE didn't make the top spot?madness
no ipods
Death of ipod... i like that prediction. =)hmm
"Boredom with green computing issues to set in. The current claims are too absurd to be sustained and there is no sign of a decent benchmark. PR went into overdrive in 2007 and we’re all just going to use a bit of common sense in 2008."Sorry but common sense for me means new technologies becomes not only faster but more efficient as well.
Even if you are in denial of the destruction caused by human wastefulness you should see the benefit of smaller power bill especially for servers and desktops running 24 hours a day.
There is nothing wrong with business advertising and promoting efficiency.
Death of the iPod?
Surely, that's a joke?While I can see new models of iPhones taking over most of the sales positions of iPods over the next few years, to predict their death in 2008, can't possibly be serious.
Apple will have sold at least 25 million more this quarter, possibly more. That surely shows that sales for the rest of their fiscal year, and the physical one as well, will be good.
You mean the death of the Zune, don't you?
don't think so...
Your iPod prediction is way off.Perhaps you forgot to calculate how overpriced the little save, portable, picnic players are?
When the demand drops they'll either lower the retail cost, or add in a new feature like bluetooth, or headphones that don't sound like a tin can connected by string, or they'll just change the color.
The iPod ain't going nowhere.