Changing face of the Tech World
"History repeats itself" - quite true. I mean, one way or the other it's got to repeat itself.
See what's happening in the tech world. Even just 2 years back could anyone have predicted what's happening to Microsoft these days? And would anyone have thought that Apple was going to have a come back? Its funny isn't it. All the economics, statistics, trends just really cannot convincingly predict what's up for grabs in the future. Ofcourse, this isn't a classic case of history repeating itself but never-the-less is a different manifestation of history itself.
I'm not good at computer history but here's my analogy: let's go back say 20 years.
What do we see? Computers becoming more and more important. We have IBM, the giant, the be all and end all, of computers. An unstoppable avalanche. We have Apple, giving shape to personal computing and desktop computers. And a new kid who's good at software and writes Basic and MSDOS. Could anyone see anybody replacing IBM??? Or the kid going to be the richest man in the world? NO!
Fast forward 15 years. The kid's grown big now, though not in hardware he's the King Kong of software, some call it the monopolistic behemoth. Where's Apple and IBM, oh they're there alright but Big Blue is focussed on other things now and Apple, well Apple is trying hard not to shut shop and go home. And there's a new kid on the block, actually 2 kids this time. They make a nice search engine and hope people will like it.
Fast forward another 5 years. The Kid seems to wading in troubled waters. Apple is doing roaring business and climbing. But Google - its like catch me if you can. It's not often you get to see stock prices soaring so high. Where's IBM in all this, well they are there, but not quite in the limelight anymore. They are now into a whole bunch of other things but they are there.
Well, times change and businesses change, and the benefit of it all - things just get better and better for us ordinary folks.
Its funny isn't it? No matter how good we might be be at this, we still cannot predict what's gonna happen even in 2 years time from now.
My thoughts? Google will become the next behemoth, but I guess they would be better of at it after learning from some of M$'s mistakes. And Apple-Intel alliance is going to huge. Be wary Dell!! IBM? they'll still be around probably doing a bunch of other things that might not interest the common man much but would still make history from time to time. And Microsoft? well they'll also be around. If you thought Mr. Gates is going to give up, then you thought wrong.
After all history has to repeat itself.
-JJ
posted by Jimson Chalissery @ 4:08 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I think you've gotten it all wrong! Microsoft can never be unseated from the top spot. Its just not possible. No one, I mean no one, can even remotely try to do that!!!
Hey that's a nice write up JJ. Quite true indeed.
Hi i liked it
and some points i would like to add,the rise of IBM,the rise of Microsoft or Google all have one thing in common,
all of them used technology to their advantage when others could not,
IBM at a time when big banks needed mainframes for computing power(the NCR employee,founder of IBM,got ahead of simple cash registers),
Microsoft when people started using internet to make decisions and they needed personal computers for that.
And Google in a market cluttered with homogenous products made dent with services giving accurate results(search engine),and none of its products are paid,keeping in line the customers preference for free softwares,(in fact it found new innovative ideas to increase revenues),dont know what will happen in future but for sure something new like iPod will change the market dynamics again.
It is bound to happen in a industry guided by technology, many of IBM's problems in 90s were caused by a big employee force which did not change with time,it happens if you are small you can easily adapt, the strategy which bought IBM back was it joined its rivals on products it thought would be unproductive to invest on,
Microsoft has been facing rivalry across all product lines but i hope it starts to feel the heat with launch of Google Browser.
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