Economists say the recession ended in June, 2009, but for many of us, it’s hard to tell the difference. Unemployment remains high and the economy is growing slowly.

This month on “The Digital Future,” Strategic News Service publisher Mark Anderson and KPLU’s Dave Meyer look at the bright spot of the economy:  the technology sector.

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In this programme Mark Anderson predicts the way the technology winds are blowing in 2011. Mark is the technology commentator who runs Strategic News Service. His trend spotting emails are subscribed to by some very influential people in the high tech industry. The magazine Fortune once described him as one of the “100 smartest people we know”.

At the end of every year, Mark Anderson takes a look ahead at 10 of the key things he thinks will prove to be significant over the coming 12 months. Here Global Business hears some of the future predictions and look back at some of the ones he made 12 months previously.

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Broadcast Times:

• Tue 4 Jan 2011 – 09:05 – BBC World Service
• Tue 4 Jan 2011 – 12:05 – BBC World Service
• Tue 4 Jan 2011 – 15:05 – BBC World Service
• Tue 4 Jan 2011 – 20:05 – BBC World Service
• Wed 5 Jan 2011 – 01:05 – BBC World Service
• Sat 8 Jan 2011 – 00:05 – BBC World Service
• Sun 9 Jan 2011 – 03:32 – BBC World Service

1. The Smartphone Market Breaks in Two: Secure / enterprise, vs. consumer / entertainment.
   • Android dominates – and balkanizes – the consumer Smartphone Market, with Apple close behind offering its Monolithic Operations.
   • RIM and XX dominate the Enterprise. XX should be Microsoft, but Apple gets it.
2. Carriers Grab Power: Google has interrupted a transition of power from Pipes to Boxes. Android gives carriers power, while the iOS takes it away. Whose walled garden do you prefer? Pray for Apple, if you are a user.
3. iTunes Seeds Its Own Competition: More real distribution competitors grow and prosper. Consumers want choice. This is a major business opportunity, on a global scale.
4. The Micro-App Ecosphere Hits a Money Wall: Prices quickly escalate, and suddenly there are two types of micro apps companies: big ones that charge and survive, and cute little ones that don’t.
5. Google Loses Its Way, failing to answer the critical question: “What Business Am I In?” even as Android, Google Phone, and e-ditions prosper (mostly without revenues). The company will be perceived as confused and unable to develop or support long-term strategy. Is this death by a thousand profitless successes?
6. The Year of the Electric Car, Part II: Real Production Numbers, Real Sales Numbers, Real Charging Stations Popping Up Like Weeds. Cars regain technology interest as a technology platform, fueled by burgeoning global sales growth, new nationalist entries, and all-electric models.
7. SNS CarryAlongs Remain the Fastest-Growing Segment in Computer Sales: We will see LOTS of new (9” x 7”) pads this year.
8. Data Matters: Oracle, the world’s largest database company, Takes Off, and emerges as a global platform. Competitor SAP suffers. The Larry Ellison/Mark Hurd team becomes as legendary as Gates and Shirley once were, and for the same reason: the ideal match of tech visionary with operating maven.
9. NetTV Is In, Cable Is Out: Penetration of IPTV use in the U.S. reaches 40%+. This marks a revolution in mass media. Cable and satellite suffer, and are wrong about customers not “cutting the cord.” Netflix benefits, and dominates the IPTV space, creating a breakout play for an already-amazing storybook company. Carriers (and countries) not providing real broadband suffer competitively. Old content players realize it is Dominate or Die in the new IP distribution world. New channels, and definitions of channels, abound.
10. E-books Go Mainstream: While paper book sales remain healthy, e-book fractional share of all book sales goes ballistic. E-reading becomes as common as eating with a spoon. U.S. wholesale e-book sales should meet or exceed $160MM per quarter during 2011. Compound Annual Growth Rates will remain over 140%.

Read more detail on these and other predictions for 2011
(SNS Subscriber login required)

Also, from KPLU Radio and NPR:

Strategic News Service publisher Mark Anderson shares his New Year’s predictions with KPLU’s Dave Meyer.

Listen here

]]> http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/12/sns-predictions-for-2011/feed/ 0 http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/07/the-untold-story-of-google-in-china/ http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/07/the-untold-story-of-google-in-china/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 02:05:13 +0000 Mark http://www.tapsns.com/blog/?p=1092 A great deal is being made of Google’s just-received renewal of its Chinese internet content license, which allows the company to continue to operate (until further notice) without censoring its searches, if I understand properly and am being given accurate information by Google, by offering a “choice” splash page at the Chinese Google homepage. 

Chinese nationals who go to this page are faced with a search box, and a choice below it, allowing them to jump to Google : Hong Kong, which is not (one hopes) censored.

This, on the face of it, is good.  Everyone feels good.  I do.  You do. I bet the ruling Party folks in Beijing do, too.

There is just one problem: China has two separate agendas here, and only one of them has been addressed in literally all of the writing on this subject.  Yes, the Chinese Communist Party insists on mind control over the Chinese people, preventing them from searching on any subjects it considers not in their interest, with Tiananmen Square being Exhibit A.

But there is another agenda item: China only wants its own Internet companies to prosper.  Time after time, it has put barriers, speed bumps and road blocks in the way of non-Chinese companies trying to get somewhere in the Chinese market.  In Google’s case, smart folks will remember when Google first came along, it was the clear choice for search, worldwide. 

Google’s first problems with the government were not about censorship, they were about the government intentionally delaying Google search results, in order to give Baidu a speed advantage.  Many studies have been done on this question, and inserting just a small – say a portion of a second – delay into server /search response, will tilt the competitive plain away from the slow site.

Because no one can complain about China and continue to do business there, Google very quietly complained about this treatment in the U.S. , and no one picked up on it.  Google did server checks inside and outside China at the time, and concluded that their internal searches were being delayed by the government.

Can you imagine the U.S. government – or the German, French or Australian governments – intentionally harming the performance of a non – domestic company’s online operations, as a policy matter?

Think about it.

Even today, China proudly points to how Baidu has a larger search market fraction than Google, as though this is Google’s fault, and so they somehow matter less.  Is this because Baidu is such an amazing engine?  Or is it thanks to a government that, as GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt said in Italy last week, “doesn’t want us to win.”

While the rest of the world is celebrating Google getting its silly little content license, let’s ask a much better question.  Are the smart guys behind the curtain in China happy to have this solution, knowing that adding another three to five seconds (vs. a fraction of a second previously)  to every search will accelerate their prior program of delaying Google search results, and thereby handing market share even more quickly to Baidu?

The answer, in my opinion, is “Yes.”  This way, it looks like capitalism and markets at work, with the Chinese champion winning, and without the embarrassment the country would have suffered if Google had just picked up and walked because of censorship.  Now, Google loses, Baidu wins, and everything is perfect.

Unless you want the truth in China.  Or unless you want to compete there fairly

I would be interested in informed comments, and please give your name when you comment.

In Global Business this week Peter Day is in conversation with Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service(SNS).  In what is becoming a ‘Global Business’ tradition Peter Day learns some of his Top 10 predictions for 2010 and looks back at how successful last year’s predictions were.

About this programme by Peter Day

…

The USA is a nation which sort of invented itself, so it is not surprising that in American life there is a huge almost religious belief in the onwards and upwards progress of technology and invention; if it gets us into a global mess such as pollution, then high tech innovation can also get us out of it, that’s the assumption.

Mark and I discussed whether this faith in the progress of technology is not slightly misplaced. Maybe we should seek other aims for humanity after the huge disruption caused by the Credit Crunch?

Maybe we should rein in our appetites, be modest about our aspirations, forswear global travel, go local and seasonal in what we wear and eat? Maybe the upwards and upwards assumptions about technology are wrong?

Well, I could not get Mark to agree with me about much of that; he has a technology minded audience. But so, for that matter, does this programme Global Business.

It makes you wonder what – if anything – we will learn from the first great global economic crisis of the 21st century. And whether technology has any thing to do with it

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When it comes to making predictions, it’s hard to beat Mark Anderson. Last month, the Strategic News Service publisher predicted Intel would face antitrust charges. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is suing the chip giant for using anti-competitive tactics. KPLU’s Dave Meyer asked Mark what he’s predicting for the New Year.

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FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington, December 10, 2009 -  Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service, released his predictions tonight for 2010 at the fifth annual SNS Predictions Dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York.  The global press in attendance included Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Business Week, The New York Times, Fortune, Le Monde, Strategy+Business and ZDNet among other business leaders.  His top ten predictions for technology for 2010 are:

1. 2010 will be The year of Platform Wars: netbooks, cell phones, pads, Cloud standards.  Clouds will tend to support the consumer world (Picnik, Amazon), enterprises will continue to build out their own data centers, and Netbook sector growth rates continue to post very large numbers.
2. 2010 will be The year of Operating System Wars: Windows 7 flavors, MacOS, Linux flavors, Symbian, Android, Chrome OS, Nokia Maemo 5. The winners, in order in unit sales: W7, MacOS, Android.  W7, ironically, by failure of imagination and by its PC-centric platform, actively clears space for others to take over the OS via mobile platforms.
3. All content goes mobile. Everything gets tagged, multi-channeled, and the walled gardens open up.  TV and movie content, particularly, break free of old trapped business models.  We are moving toward watching first-run TV and movies on phones, for a price.  Which leads to no. 4.
4. MobileApps and Mobile Content drive MicroPayments, which move from niche to mainstream payment models.  Payment for content will split along age lines, at around 35; above, pay; below, don’t pay.
5. The Phone vs. the PC: A Split Along Two Paths (enterprise vs. consumer)
   • fully integrated user experience, poor back-end (mail and calendar services, etc.) integration; the Apple environment;
   • splintered user experience, like WMobile vs. WPC, with integrated back end.
   • Windows sells integration in the plumbing, Apple does it on the screen.
   • Note: The phone is now the most interesting computer platform, and it is driving innovation: software, business models, distribution.  Netbooks are next up as drivers.
6. There will be a Cloud Catastrophe in 2010 that limits Cloud growth by raising security issues and restricting enterprise trust.  CIOs will see the cloud as the doorstep for industrial espionage.
7. A huge chasm opens in computing, between Consumer and Enterprise (government/business.), with Apple, Google and most Asian hardware companies in Consumer, and Dell, IBM, Cisco, and MS on the Enterprise side.  HP will straddle both.  Before 2010, talk was all about unifying consumer and enterprise.  Now, talk will be about their split.
8. Microsoft loses in its Consumer play: except for gaming, it is Game Over for MS in Consumer. This will make Consumer the place to be, where the most robust and exciting change artists will work.
9. News media that survive will move to the subscription model, in whole or in part, along age lines.  (See no. 4)
10. Connecting remote data to people and things in real time will lead to a series of exciting new devices and applications. Possible examples: real time comparison and recipe-driven shopping, facial recognition (in social spaces) linked to bios, self-guided tours by phone, voice-queried information about your personal environment.  Many of these are technically proved out today, but they will start to emerge as an exciting and brand new trend in applications in 2010.

Anderson included some predictions for the economic landscape as well:

1. China shows its weakness.  Will the bubble break?  Equity markets too volatile, banks are fake.  After the stumble, people start to see that China is also economically unreliable, for its own reasons.
2. Currency Wars intensify: world vs. China.
3. Corporate vs. Government Power: The new battle.  Countries are betrayed, corporations viewed with increased mistrust.
   • mercantilist vs. open markets
   • corporate (US, Japan, SK) vs. govt. (China, Russia)
4. Western Systems Remain Broken:
   • Congress: reelection costs and bribery
   • Healthcare: out-of-control premiums and operating costs
   • Higher Education: too-high tuition and operating costs
   • K12: Teaching and Learning: Failing and cost-independent
   • Finance: No reinstatement of Glass Steagall, no uptick rule, 133 banks dead 2009, 455 on the FDIC watch list.  Big banks lying about balance sheets.
   • Science: Only incremental discoveries.  Perhaps technology drives science now.
5. Global Liquidity remains the greatest risk; carry trades everywhere.  Inflation wherever the economy is not unemployment-impaired.  Now we will face a split world, just as the U.S. economy was split, this time caused by unemployment.

What’s the best way to attract more high-tech companies to the Northwest? That’s one of the key questions being raised at next month’s FiReGlobal conference in Seattle. Strategic News Service publisher (and KPLU commentator) Mark Anderson is hosting the technology conference. He spoke with KPLU’s Dave Meyer.

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On this month’s Future in Review with Mark Anderson [of Strategic News Service], Mark predicts the technology sector will recover before the rest of the economy does. He tells KPLU’s Dave Meyer to keep an eye on computer chip sales.

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University of Washington computer science professor Ed Lazowska is known as a straight talking rabble-rouser who doesn’t pull many punches. And he certainly lived up to that reputation today at the OVP Venture Partners Technology Summit, criticizing everything from the state’s inability to adopt a broadband policy to a culture of mediocrity at the UW.

But Lazowska — who appeared on stage with the equally opinionated Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service –  reserved his toughest comments for a Lake Wobegon mentality in the state where everything appears to be above average. …

Read the complete article.