死んでしまったら私のことなんか誰も話さない

（日本語バージョンはこちら）

I read my past entries, especially about the forecast in the high-tech industry again today.

Many things happened during past 2 years. Now I'd like to examine my forecasts in the past and what I'm expecting now in computer-related and high-tech industry for the future.

* Habitat (and architecture of business) around computers is changing dramatically: that's what I blogged in December 2006. The next-big-thing is CLOUD COMPUTING, in my opinion, albeit I was not sure WHAT/HOW changed 3 years ago. The one I'll blog about is that.

* Importance of operational excellence increases in the competitive advantage for personal computer manufacturers. U.S. manufacturers had advantages in sales/support channels and those brands, but they depended on Asian EMSs for design and assembling, I wrote in September 2006. Netbooks sells well these days. Also, Taiwanese manufactures like Asus, Acer started to sell netbooks with their own brand names. This trend wii go on for a while. The only possible thing I can imagine is touch-screen technologies to add more value for personal computers.

* Would be the new lifestyle that consumers access/use any contents freely at anywhere, and any time. Apple was the most advanced to build a concrete and integrated business model in this field: I wrote in November 2006. The point was right. However, I didn't expect that iPhone became so disruptive not only for cell phone market but also for voice communication and gaming. Of course iPhone has an enormous impact on existing manufacturers (i.e. Nokia, Samsung, Palm, and RIM) of cell phone. There are an analyst predicts Apple sells 24 million iPhone units in 2009. By the way, 2008 sales of cell phone was 40 million units in Japan. Nowadays Japanese cell phone market looks like a garden enclosed with a wall... I guess Apple might redefine their whole product lineups including MacBook, iPod, and iPhone by tablets (rumored they would sell it soon). Or they have a brandnew concept I don't even imagine. Light Peak project (a plans for an interoperable standard which could handle massive amounts of data and replace the multitudinous connector types with a single connector, Engadget reported) will be a part of Apple's ambition. Apple is one of the most innovative companies redefining the market. I hope I will blog about Apple separately from this entry soon.

* Enterprise segment: First of all, Sun Microsystems would have a hard time, I forecasted 3 years ago. In fact, they were acquired by Oracle. This merger is a signal shows cloud computing rise to reconstruct hardware/software competitive landscape, in my understanding. However, I would like to express little optimism about Oracle's future. Their strategy had had a characteristic of mature companies to acquire applications to expand its product lineups and gain more from existing customers. Their growth of main products (DBMS) also became slower. That tendency becomes more clearer from their last financial report. Secondly, Hewlett-Packard. My analysis was they might strengthen (1) Servers and PCs, or (2) Software, and system integration. It would be reasonable to understand they chose (2) from the fact they merged EDS, one of the largest system integrators in U.S. However, I haven't analyzed how they have competed against IBM, the #1 system/software maker in the world.

* Software (my current business): It shows healthy growth according to Software Magazine (The Software 500, 2008 edition). The WW sales was $451.8 billion in 2008. Notable growth of Indian companies. It becomes more difficult to distinguish the border separating hardware from software in terms of business these days.

There are other leading companies in new computing era: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and so on. In addition, I would like to cover Salesforce.com later. It would take time to write about more than 50 books I've bought (haven't finished all yet) ...