"When do new technologies really take off? When does the fever chart for revenue suddenly resemble the handle on an upright"
When do new technologies really take off? When does the fever chart for revenue suddenly resemble the handle on an upright hockey stick?
That answer has confounded investors and companies from the earliest beginnings of Silicon Valley. Good venture capitalists figure that 1 in 10 early-round investments pan out in a normal market, and sometimes even fewer than that. That’s why they typically hedge their bets and share the investment with other VCs.
The market is getting more complicated though, which may affect those odds. With convergence of everything from embedded to discrete processors and all things consumer, the real clincher is no longer a matter of rolling the dice. It’s now a matter of building multi-market standards, such as ZigBee or 802.11x, getting enough companies to build critical mass for those standards, and then getting technology developers to create new products based on those standards.
And beyond that, it’s a question of getting the cost down. HDTV is hot market now, but back when plasma screens were $25,000 most people never seriously considered buying them. Likewise, market conditions are ripe now for hybrid sales even though most people will actually pay more for battery replacement than they would for lower gas mileage.
Perhaps even more daunting is the challenge of developing businesses across what used to be distinctly different markets to take advantage of convergence, and integrating the back end of the supply chain to make different products work seamlessly together. It’s the integration that is key here, and that’s a problem because often it entails integration of what is here already with what will come—and making sure it all works after it’s already designed and built.
For engineers, this is a major challenge. For investors, it’s a major risk. And for consumers—well, they can just wait until the first two problems are solved.
Source :EDN
When do new technologies really take off? When does the fever chart for revenue suddenly resemble the handle on an upright hockey stick?
That answer has confounded investors and companies from the earliest beginnings of Silicon Valley. Good venture capitalists figure that 1 in 10 early-round investments pan out in a normal market, and sometimes even fewer than that. That’s why they typically hedge their bets and share the investment with other VCs.
The market is getting more complicated though, which may affect those odds. With convergence of everything from embedded to discrete processors and all things consumer, the real clincher is no longer a matter of rolling the dice. It’s now a matter of building multi-market standards, such as ZigBee or 802.11x, getting enough companies to build critical mass for those standards, and then getting technology developers to create new products based on those standards.
And beyond that, it’s a question of getting the cost down. HDTV is hot market now, but back when plasma screens were $25,000 most people never seriously considered buying them. Likewise, market conditions are ripe now for hybrid sales even though most people will actually pay more for battery replacement than they would for lower gas mileage.
Perhaps even more daunting is the challenge of developing businesses across what used to be distinctly different markets to take advantage of convergence, and integrating the back end of the supply chain to make different products work seamlessly together. It’s the integration that is key here, and that’s a problem because often it entails integration of what is here already with what will come—and making sure it all works after it’s already designed and built.
For engineers, this is a major challenge. For investors, it’s a major risk. And for consumers—well, they can just wait until the first two problems are solved.
Source :EDN