Postively positive
December 31, 2008 | Random Blackouts
Well it’s been an interesting year and as we creep past the various holidays I’m left with a feeling of anticipation for the new year. Looking back in 2008 we saw changes in the global economic state of the likes never seen before. At first IT felt safe after all how much could be cut then had already? The credit freeze far out did the recession (not to be confused with).
The iPhone,
It’s been a rough storm for Plasmon. Plasmon LTD failing to get funding and going into bankruptcy, a US private equity holding company purchased certain assets of the British company and continuing on.
Prodisc fighting for it’s life (it looks very grime for the manufacturer of blank CD-R, DVD-R and DVD+R discs). Can you Yahoo?
We saw the victory of Blu-ray format over HD-DVD bringing an end to the never ending format wars. Victory was short lived with the coming of the economic crisis and the up-converting DVD players which produce a better image then conventional DVD players and do not require a expensive upgrade. Up-converting DVD players are under $100 vs. $400 for a Blu-ray player and then the cost of discs. It will be a tough uphill struggle given the times.
Certainly the video on demand business in the United States is questionable given the weak network connections on the last mile of the Internet. YouTube grows in viral entertainment and yet there is a core of some really good stuff on the service. Maybe high definition is not everything. Solid state flash memory gives portability and a built in port that overcomes the costs of other forms of data storage. Consider the optical drive I’m so near and dear to. In order to play or read a CD one must have a drive. It takes up space and costs money. In order to record one must have special media to create a disc. It certainly can be done and is being done but a flashdrives and thumb drives offer a quicker interface not dependent on a disc format. Will it end there? Secure Digital and Micro Secure Digital format offer an even smaller format. Easily interfaced with smart phones, back to the iPhone and the Smart Phone generation. Where will cloud computing take us? will high definition even be required? WiMAX would certainly provide the next step in the “revolution”.
Happy New Year!
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