by Anton Shilov
09/24/2002 | 12:41 PM
This year has been extremely unsuccessful for IT and semiconductor industries and it is hardly surprising that it may become the worst year since 1998 or even mid-nineties for some companies. Even worse news is the fact that banks and consulting companies now lower their forecasts for the next year as well. They still see pretty moderate growth in 2003, but they have to say that it will be even lower than originally expected.
Intel’s and Microsoft’s, the main indicators of PC industry, stocks plummeted to six and three year lows respectively yesterday. Generally, we all knew that it is the bear market now, however, we definitely should mark the day, when Intel was on the 6-year low at $14.10. The latter fact also means that the crisis in 1998 was not serious compared to what we have now for the microprocessor giant.<%BANNER[article]%>
The year’s second half sales figures are generally higher compared to the first half’s. This year the figures will continue to rise towards the end of the year, but the biggest players on the field indicate that the revenues are far from skyrocket. Certain semiconductor companies even said the sales would be flat to down this quarter compared to the previous quarter.
The reason why people do not want to pay for new computers and appliances is the lack of clear advantages for them. For instance, it does not make sense to by a microwave oven, which can use the Internet if you do not have a broadband internet connection. The Pentium 4 2.0GHz CPU is also not needed for those, who does everyday routines on his computer, such as Internet surfing and paperwork. Modern graphics cards are also far from being 100% utilised by average users. Loads of features cellular phones can offer are not supported by all the operators around Europe and the USA. As a result, there are almost no reasons to buy a new computer or change any other device purchased two years ago and get a blazingly fast and feature-rich new one. It definitely offers speed and maybe some additional features, but average person see no benefits or is unable to use them! The same also applies to large enterprises: they do not realise why they may need to buy something new now. Everything is also accompanied by very difficult economic situation in the USA, as a result, the indication of growth is really a tough question.
In fact, I think that it is the right time for Microsoft and other software vendors to release something that will make use of all these gigahertz and gigabytes. What about the Longhorn?