Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Post Wintel

MUNICH, GERMANY - OCTOBER 07:  Chief Executive...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The Economist: The End Of Wintel THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. ...... the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. ..... increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer ..... “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. ..... the Wintel marriage is crumbling. ...... The Wintel marriage is now threatened, oddly enough, by technological progress. Processors grow ever smaller and more powerful; internet and wireless connections keep speeding up. This has created both centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are pushing computing into data centres (huge warehouses full of servers) and onto mobile devices— ...... The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. ...... now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. ...... Apple .. is building a huge data centre ....... Having lost its battle with the European Commission, for instance, Microsoft must now give Windows users in the European Union a choice of which web browser to install. ...... Microsoft has made big bets on cloud computing. It has already built a global network of data centres and developed an operating system in the cloud called Azure. The firm has put many of its own applications online, even Office, albeit with few features. What is more, Microsoft has made peace with the antitrust authorities and even largely embraced open standards. ....... Microsoft’s mobile business is in disarray. ...... in tablet computers, Microsoft is behind, too ..... Paul Otellini .. is pinning his hopes on a new family of processors called Atom. Rather than making these chips ever more powerful, Intel is making them ever cheaper and less power-hungry ....... ARM’s chips guzzle little power and cost much less than Intel’s, because its licensing fees are low and most customers use foundries (contract chipmakers) to make them. .... Intel’s position seems safe as long as Moore’s Law holds ..... Microsoft has yet to deliver a competitive version of Windows for smart-phones and tablets ..... Meego, an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Microsoft, by cuddling up to ARM, will be able to build chips of its own. ..... Oracle, Cisco and IBM will vie for corporate customers; Apple and Google will scramble for individuals (see table). IT, like the world, is becoming multipolar.

Like Bill Gates once said, success is a lousy teacher. But that does not explain it fully, or even a big part of it. This is about the tectonic forces in innovation, in technology. This is ultimately about hurricane size clouds.

The big company of one era does not end up also being the big company of another era. That is the nature of the beast.

Wintel was a PC era marriage. And the PC era has been ending for a while now. You end up facing a classic problem. How do you lose your love for the big revenue sources and go for the little innovative products that might (or might not) become big tomorrow, but if they become big, they will become big by eating into your current big products? No wonder it is almost always some outsider doing that munching and crunching.

As IT fans out into ever larger data centers and ever more powerful mobile devices, we have entered the era of welcome fragmentation. The PC used to be the center of the computing universe. The PC will still be around, but it will be just one creature in the vast tech ecosystem. It will be just one galaxy in the tech universe.

Like is supposed to happen in functional capitalism: the consumer wins.

The Economist
  1. World economy: The rising power of the Chinese worker
  2. Bullfighting in Catalonia: The land of the ban
  3. Turkey and its rebel Kurds: An endless war
  4. Wealth, poverty and compassion: The rich are different from you and me
  5. Climate change: Warming world
  6. Lexington: Arizona, rogue state
  7. Afghanistan: Don't go back
  8. China and the death penalty: High executioners
  9. Unemployment benefits: Read this shirt
  10. America, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Kayani's gambit
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Social, Gaming, Email

Nielsen Wire: What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) ... Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. ..... “Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing .... Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks
I like how blogs have been included in the top category of social. I am not surprised. That speaks to my experience. I have said time and again at this blog that Blogger continues to be my social media platform of choice.

The big news is search is no longer king. That begs the question, will social as we know it still be king in 2015? I doubt that. These titles are not known to last. There is always another hit movie. Social will stay big, but at some point it is going to recede into the background like search. Search used to be king. Who is the next king? You have to ask. (This Is Not Happening: King Dennis)

Or maybe search was never king, it was email. Email is social. If the next king will also be in the social space, that has to confirm our suspicions that the internet is primarily a communication tool. The internet is one big telephone. The internet is one big telephone more than one big library. But the trick is to be able to blur that line and claim it is one big telephone.

November 2005: Email, Search, News

Google keeps trying and keeps failing at social. Social is not in Google's DNA. But info is. Where Google could really shine is at social search. Give me a ridiculously good blog search engine. Give me ridiculously good Twitter search results. Google could do well in social, if it brought search to the table. Google's challenge is to blur the line between the telephone and the library and make claim the internet is one big library. That is tough to do.


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