The market has changed enormously in the short year BloggingStocks has been bringing you moment by moment coverage. YouTube is now Gootube. AOL has dropping its membership model. The unknown in many quarterly reports increasingly comes from overseas sales. On this, our first anniversary, our editors challenged us to put on our pointed hats, pull out the crystal balls and peer into the future. What will the world look like a year from now?
- The wireless scramble will become even more of a madhouse, as overlapping systems fight for the right to extend free coverage community-wide in return for ad revenue and upsell opportunities. The idea of a coffeehouse drawing customers to enjoy an island of wireless will seem quaint. Those companies selling wireless access in airports, etc. will see their business evaporate.
- Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, tapping into its iPod customer base, will finally provide an integrated music/telephone device that the public will embrace. Cell phone providers will scramble to offer competing products/services, spending huge dollars to out-promote Apple. With phone downloading, CDs will join VCR tapes and casettes on the junk heap.
- The defense industry will continue booming, as the wear and tear of the Iraq war, the need to retool for future conflicts, and strong support from the White House combine to funnel necessary funds to the Pentagon.
- The public, having read story after story about the success of private equity funds, will look to buy in on the action. They'll get it too; someone will sell them the last piece, lost in the back of the fridge for a couple of weeks.
- The pay-per-click model of internet advertising will continue to diminish, replaced with some version of pay-per-response. If you click on an ad and buy the product, a whole lot of people will get a taste of the profits. Web metrics will grow in sophistication; Google will know your shoe size and where you hide the house key.
- General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) will introduce its version of last year's great idea. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) will trap millions more consumers in its web of cross-permissions. Over-exuberant investment in China and India will start to remind us of the dot.com boom.
- And financial prognosticators will still be predicting tomorrow based on yesterday.
Your turn- what do, the BloggingStocks.com reader, expect in the next 12 months?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-27-2007 @ 11:26AM
bob apple said...
Why not add a premium company to your list like PH?