Guy Kewney

It’s going to be a tough year. No, this isn’t a prediction of economic disaster – well, apart from the financial hardship that awaits thousands of organisations that have not budgeted for the extra support needed by Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 users who can’t make anything work – it’s the problem of finding out how to deal with opportunity.

To put it another way, I predict that in years to come everybody in the IT business, with the possible exception of PC manufacturers, will look back on 2007 with much fondness.

It’s difficult to know where we are. “You can’t get there from here” is only a good joke if you know where “here” is. What I suspect is that we are at a turning point. I think today’s world of technology, seen from the year 2017, will look like the end of the era in which it was deemed necessary for any given device to be able to show both video and non-video graphics on the same screen.

The thing is, power and size are proportional in today’s gadgets. A small device uses little power; a large device uses a lot. But the next generation of paper-like display technologies will be capable of providing an A4 image while consuming less electricity than a wristwatch. And as long as you are displaying just black and white text, the processor can be the smallest of ARM chips.

What they won’t be able to support is 50 frames per second. For that, you’ll need fast-response displays and, crucially, powerful processors. Therefore, devices will be divided into two categories depending not just on whether they are big or small, but on whether they have to show video or not.

The trouble with 2007 is that none of this is happening yet. Nonetheless, we have to make plans for a future in which these enabling technologies open up new, profitable markets.

It’s not a trivial problem. Something that will make someone a fortune in 2020 may actually be a device that simply won’t work until Moore’s Law has take n it not just down the learning curve, but right around the learning circle. Remember the first digital cameras in the mid-90s? Remember the first MP3 players? And the first microprocessor industrial controllers? They were a lot more trouble than they were worth.

As I said: a tough year.

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