Tech Sector Turns to Past for Future Profits
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But when business demand catches up, you'll have a thunderstorm," George Colony, president of U.S. consultancy Forrester Research said at a conference here this week.
"We are due for another thunderstorm now," he said.
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Technology companies at CeBIT, the world's largest annual electronics trade fair, hope inventions from the past decade will reverse their fortunes in the next.
No major new acronyms were launched in the northern German city of Hanover, as the two trillion dollar-per-year technology industry focuses on making money with the buzzwords of previous years, such as Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth.
"It takes a society a while to digest the old technology. But when business demand catches up, you'll have a thunderstorm," George Colony, president of U.S. consultancy Forrester Research said at a conference here this week.
"We are due for another thunderstorm now," he said.
Silicon Valley-based Intel, the world's largest chip maker, rallied all major computer makers behind its new Wi-Fi computer chip, which hooks laptop PCs up to the Internet without wires.
U.S. phone maker Motorola teamed up with music TV channel MTV to deliver video clips to handsets, while consumer electronics maker Philips said it will sell high-speed Internet products through Dutch telecoms operator KPN.
Market research firms Forrester and Gartner Dataquest have recently forecast another year of low to no growth for the tech sector, which has not grown since the peak year 2000.
This is considered a failure in a former hyper-growth industry, grown fat on double-digit sales gains three years ago.
HIGH-TECH DISNLEYLAND
CeBIT is a high-tech Disneyland for the gadget-obsessed, but this year most of the rides were only half-full. Many of the nearly 30 aircraft-hangar sized halls were left partially empty of exhibitors.
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