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2007 predictions and 2006 payday
After last year's predictions for 2006 provided a mixed bag of failures (see below), I'll give this punditry thing another try this year. It can hardly go any worse than last year.
Discussion is encouraged, flaming is allowed only if you demonstrate in your that you never read the posting but are commenting nonetheless.
1. After seeing Windows Vista in the wild, customers shrug their shoulders and go back to work. A few geeks and a small army of reporters will line up at stores for a midnight launch, the rest of the world will go on with its real life.
2. Businesses will reward the Micosoft-Novell deal with their dollars and allow Novell to create a genuine competitor for Red Hat. The noise from the religious open source camp will eventually quiet down.
3. Oracle will parade a few customers for its Red Hat Linux support offering in front of press and analysts, but their limited numbers will illustrate that support and bug fixes alone don't make for a viable Linux offering.
4. As online criminals turn increasingly to highly targeted attacks, a small scale worm will target OS X in an effort to conduct industrial espionage. It will exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Office, allowing Apple to blame the attack on Redmond.
5. Google will fail to find a way to monetize traffic for the user generated videos that are hosted on Google Video and Youtube. To consolidate its position as a leading online video provider, the firm will create a genuine video search engine that indexes video both inside and outside its network.
6. After the embarrassing failure of the new Netscape.com, AOL will acquire Digg.com for several hundred million dollars.
7. AMD will take back the technology lead from Intel in the chip market when it launches it quad core processor. Intel will be forced to continue to drop its prices to maintain market share. To cut back on R&D investments, it will unveil a timeline for a chip that will move Itanium systems to the x86 platform.
8. HP will remain the most boring and passionless company in high tech. Financially it will prosper.
9. The One Laptop per Child project will ship millions of Linux powered notebook computers to developing economies. Horror stories about containers full of OLPCs sitting idle in docks and ending up on the grey market will embarrass Negroponte, but the project ultimately will be declared a success.
10. After a slew of high profile computer security incidents, governments will crack down on the computer industry and adopt legislation that forces proper levels of corporate IT security.
And finally: Payday for 2006 predictions:
(as I'm judge, jury and executioner, I'm sure that you disagree with these scores).
1: Vista launching on time. 0 points
2: Open source develops patent weapon against Microsoft: 0 points
3: iPods iconic status will fail to cause a major shift in Mac sales: 1 point
4: Intel Viiv will fail: 1 point
5: Samsung acquires AMD: 0 points
6: PS3 will kick Xbox 360's but: 1 point
7: Google's valuation will drop: 0 poits
8: RSS adoption will increase to 10 pct: 0 points
9: Users will sue Microsoft for insecure code: 0 points
10: VNU will make many more headlines: 1 point
Total: 4 points
BMW's 2007 prediction: your car will have an espresso cup holder and LCD display in the back. Chauffeur not included.
technorati tags: 2007, predictions
December 20, 2006 at 11:31 PM | Permalink
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Comments
You did say espresso, not coffee, cup holder, right?!?
What's the point, really? Might as well include a cold pizza slice dispenser and the solar-powered mayonnaise warmer for that matter.
Posted-by: Greg Sherwin | 21 Dec 2006 07:53:29
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