Who will dominate the future of IT? What can be expected? If we look forward there are some points which deserve attention.
- Mobility
There are already more mobile devices on earth than computers, and the development speed is enormous. Today's mobile devices are comparable to PCs in every respect except size. To remain successful companies must invest a lot to make thinner, faster, lighter mobile smart phones, tablets, and laptops and make battery life longer.
- Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is nothing else than the modern, personalized Internet, which provides personalized services rather than read only information. Cloud services can open doors to things which are not possible in traditional computing (like Siri) with practically unlimited computing power or storage capacity. Working off-line makes less and less sense, it's only a temporary situation after that we "upload" our work like I do with this blog.
- Virtual teams
Facebook my have some problems but social networking are here to stay. However it's a bit like the story of PDAs and tablets, there were present for almost two decades but Apple could make them to a real success.
In my view the big winners in the future will be companies who dominate all this three areas. So I see the chance of some big players of today:
Apple
Apple is almost a miracle,with so much success that one almost expects a slow demise. No miracle lasts ever. Anyway they are well set up for the future with the iPhone and iPad and have enough cash and a fine ecosystem to keep the dominance. The real challenge is that Apple is slowly running out of personal electronic devices to redesign and reinterpret. After the TV only cameras and audio systems remain as a new area but in fact they are already well covered by the iPhone and iPod. Either they enter a fully new area (cars?) or have to make their cloud services as good as anything else they have made up to know. This is not the case yet, what's more it would require Apple to open it services for other devices which doesn't match their culture. Even so Apple has good chances in the future too.
Microsoft
It doesn't seem true for Microsoft. It will remain a large and profitable company also in the future, but its dominance is diminishing fast. Windows8 won't make wonders, Office is loosing significance and Cloud services are not yet a hit. Gaining share in the tablet and smart-phone market is possible but not easy.
Microsoft has to make some tough decisions (e.g. milk and sell or close some it's products) and focus on some key areas. We will see soon if they are able to do that.
IBM & ORACLE
Oracle is on the best way to be a general software infrastructure company and so the sole real competitor of IBM. It seems that IBM is slowly moving towards the services industry. The strategy of ORACLE is clearer. Both will do well in the future but consumers and even employees using "traditional" desktop computers won't see their names very often.
Except search the only area where Google is in offensive is Android. They have three tasks: defend and extend search, develop and increase Office solutions and push Android. All three is happening, Google has the only problem that consumer will use their name as a synonym for search but forget about it otherwise. That is serious and they should address it soon.
Amazon
Amazon has to come out of it's comfort zone of selling books and other things on line and move towards end user devices and apps. Kindle was a good start but that is not enough. More needs to be done. I still wonder that they don't have an appstore and Kindle Fire is not good enough. They have chosen a hard way by subordinating profitability to market share. With less money it's harder to invest into development; either they found a partner or change strategy.
Samsung
Samsung produces excellent hardware but that is all. It may be enough for growth and profit but not for leading. There is a lot to do.
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