The Internet Age is shifting new trends in society and posing significant challenges for traditional industries.
Recently, Google, the company specializing in online search services, proposed to establish a free Wi-Fi system for the entire city of San Francisco, the center of the Internet revolution with leading industries in Silicon Valley.
Looking at the online business landscape, eBay surprised the business community with its decision to acquire the entire network phone service Skype. Apple introduced the tiny iPod nano, which fits snugly in a shirt pocket.
The British media company (BBC) announced that it would begin broadcasting online television programs. Thus, we can see that the Internet is entering its second revolution.
This revolution is not entirely like the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, which saw the stock prices of dot-com companies plummet dramatically. According to many experts, this second revolution will shake industries from publishing to telecommunications, accompanied by good news: consumers will always directly benefit from this second revolution.
According to Brooks Gray, the CEO of Technology Business Research (USA), this revolution also poses significant challenges for companies that fail to adapt quickly.
These challenges include:
* Significant reductions in price and size. Just look at mobile “flash memory” drives, iPod nanos, mobile phones with cameras, and soon mobile phones that can receive television signals.
* Information moving towards digitalization. The differences between personal computers, mobile phones, TVs, books, and newspapers will continue to narrow. Then we will see the emergence of “digital convergence” that consumers are currently using: mobile phones that double as cameras, flash drives that also function as radios, wristwatches that serve as flash drives…
* Expanded mobility. Business, work, and study will increasingly incorporate this mobility.
* Decreased profit margins. As information becomes digitalized, profit margins may become tighter. The Internet may grow, but that does not mean companies will earn more profit.
* Traditional industries being shaken. In the telecommunications sector, for example, American companies and consumers are flocking to subscribe to Vonage’s phone service at a cost of only 1/100 of traditional phone services.
Even Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, has stated: “I believe that free Internet phone services will be everywhere, not in 10 years but in just 2-3 years.”
And Google appears to be a competitor on par with Microsoft, according to Joe Wilcox, a leading analyst at Jupiter Research, USA. Google’s ambition is to turn the Internet into a giant computer, where desktop computers are merely a means to access the web world.
Surely we still remember Betamax and VHS? Today, people are rushing to buy the iPod nano at a price of $299. Incredible!
