SNS in the News - March 4, 2002

World Congress on IT: Things Can Only Get Better

Broadcast Monday 4 March 2002
with Richard Aedy

Summary:
IT has had a terrible 18 months. But things are about to get better. Demographic trends, economic changes and device designs and prices will converge to push up adoption rates of IT.

Details or Transcript:
Richard Aedy: The last 18 months has been awful for IT but despite this, one analyst Mark Anderson from the Strategic News Service is saying ëdonít, worry, be happyí.

Mark Anderson: Not exactly Richard but close. What I am saying is thereís a very long term up draft about to occur and that some of these problems, if not all of them, are caused by non-market forces. So we were doing really well about two years ago if you recall before Allan Greenspan decided to personally attack our NASDAC market for instance with great effect. And there have been a lot of things that governments have done, often unintentionally, which have damaged the build out of the net and the broadband net, and these are bad. These things have caused a lot of economic harm. Now governments are waking up to the fact that they have caused damage so in general these non market forces, these government forces letís just call them, are lighting themselves now in a more positive way, itís really a reversal on what they were doing two years ago. And thatís great news for IT providers.

Richard Aedy: In your presentation you talked about a convergence of all sorts of things that will lead to more good times in IT.

Mark Anderson: Thatís right. Often you hear the term convergence to mean all the devices in your living room somehow making love with each other and I donít believe in that kind of convergence myself. I actively try avoid buying those things and I think most people do. I donít need more complexity in my life but thereís another kind of convergence which I call real convergence where trends in demographics tend to meet, device sizes or device designs and those things tend to need economic changes in the world and suddenly you have a huge adoption rate of something new and that kind of convergence is something weíre just going through right now.

Richard Aedy: Well give me an example?

Mark Anderson: : Alright, weíre just about to create a large number of new, brand new first time users of technology. These people come from places like China, India, Russia, Central Europe, Latin America and the ASEAN countries. So conservatively maybe 230 million in the next ten years just from China and India, probably totalling about 500 million people world wide. Thereís a huge number of brand new never seen before customers for IT vendors. And those people have become able to purchase and use things and then these companies who need to design products and it just so happens that almost by accident where at a time in the history of the design and building of chip based products that we can make a full on pc thatís about the size of a library book. So itís also going to be priced about $200 or $300 well thatís the right price and so people in China who are increasingly able to buy these things for themselves, these devices will be circulated around the world. And this is a long term project, this is going to go on for 5, 10, 15 years.