This is the time of year when when I typically write my technology predictions, an annual exercise in ego and humiliation I’ve been doing for about a dozen years. Historically I’ve been around 70 percent correct, which is more accurate than a random walk and therefore maybe — maybe — worth reading. You decide. But first let’s look back at my predictions from a year ago to see how I did. Understand that I’m the only pundit who actually reviews his previous year’s predictions. If only I could be a weasel like those other guys!
#1 — Microsoft gets worse before it gets better.
MISS — Satya Nadella a longtime Microsoft veteran became the CEO. The early fear was an insider would continue Ballmer’s culture. Nadella has not and has brought a new management approach to Microsoft. He has opened communications with customers and partners, recognized Microsoft mistakes, and seems to be finding a place for Microsoft in a cross platform mobile world. The reins of Microsoft are clearly in Nadella’s hands. There is no apparent sign of resistance or conflict from Gates and Ballmer. So things did not get worse. Microsoft has clearly turned the corner and it headed in a better direction. Amazing things are possible when you hire the right person for CEO. I didn’t think they would.
#2 — IBM throws in the towel. Any minute some bean counter at IBM is going to figure out that it is statistically impossible for the company to reach its stated earnings-per-share goal of $20 for 2015.
HIT — After 3 disappointing quarterly earnings in 2014, IBM admitted the $20 EPS would not be possible in 2015. Cuts throughout 2014 in IBM have seriously damaged the company. IBM continues to alienate itself with its customers. Revenue continues to drop. There are management crises in many parts of IBM but this isn’t obvious to the outside world yet. The board is getting a lot of heat.
IBM’s new strategy in 2014 was to double down on its old strategy – CAMSS – Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Social, and Security. The only problem is IBM’s existing businesses are declining faster than the new businesses can grow. Until IBM stops damaging their Services divisions and repairs them, IBM will continue to falter.
#3 — Blackberry to Microsoft (assuming Elop gets the top job at Microsoft).
MISS — Microsoft did not buy Blackberry following its Nokia acquisition. In 2014 Microsoft squandered its investment in Nokia. The value of the Nokia brand and team is gradually being lost. Microsoft even has plans to get rid of the name Nokia.
#4 — Intel does ARM, kinda.
MISS — This has not happened… yet. IBM’s spinoff of its semiconductor operations to Global Foundries shows how hard and how long it takes to make changes like this. In 2014 most of the legal issues between Apple and Samsung were resolved. This dark chapter may be coming to an end and there may be less need for Apple to change foundries. Still, ARM is about to take over the world.
#5 — Samsung peaks. With Apple gone (as a customer) and Samsung phone margins eroding, what’s the company to do? 4K TVs aren’t it. Samsung needs to actually invent something and I don’t see that happening, at least not in 2014.
HIT — For the most part this prediction was correct. The good news is Samsung did not sit idly by in 2014. Early in 2015 at the CES show they announced a number of products, and a vision of a fully smart home.
#6 — Facebook transforms itself (or tries to) with a huge acquisition.
HIT — This prediction was correct. In 2014 Facebook acquired several companies. Instead of pursuing Snapchat, they bought WhatsApp. They also purchased Oculus VR, Ascenta, ProtoGeo Oy, PrivateCore, and WaveGroup Sound. They spent over $21B in acquisitions in 2014.
#7 — Cable TV is just fine, thank you. Avram thinks cable TV will go all-IP.
HIT — This prediction is on track! Over the last couple years cable TV has been quietly going 100 percent digital. With the recent announcement of the Sling TV by Dish Network there is a clear trend towards a true IP television service. Improvements by Roku and Google, and Amazon’s new Fire TV are all part of TV’s future. To stay competitive and relevant cable TV will have to offer low cost Internet devices for TVs and provide programming for them.
#8 — The Netflix effect continues, this time with pinkies raised. Hollywood is for sale.
HIT – Hollywood is still confused. Is Netflix just another distributor, or are they a producer, or are they a competitor? The late in 2014 cyber attack of Sony shows how out of touch Hollywood is with the Internet.
#9 — What cloud? The cloud disappears.
HIT – This prediction is correct, but not yet. If you ask IBM cloud is growing and strategic. It is growing and important, but is becoming a commodity service super-fast. Important progress is being made in cloud technology – containers, Docker, Rocket, CoreOS, etc. The net result is there will be very little for a cloud provider to do to other than maintain a datacenter full of servers. Prices and profit margins will be tight.
#10 — Smart cards finally find their place in America. I covered smart cards in Electric Money, my PBS series from 2001, yet they still aren’t popular in the USA. Smart cards, if you don’t know it, are credit or debit cards with embedded RFID chips that impart greater security though at a cost. They’ve been popular in Europe for 15 years but American banks are too cheap to use them.. or were. The Target data breach and others will finally change that in 2014 as the enterprise cost of insecurity becomes just too high even for banks Too Big to Fail.
HIT — This prediction was correct. Card readers across the country are being upgraded to support smart cards. Most responsible retailers are working to improve their credit card security at warp speed. Some retailers had no “change freeze” during the 2014 holiday shopping season. Normally during this peak sales period no changes to a retailer systems and networks is allowed. This year was different. Security projects continued through the holidays. The major credit card providers are retooling their systems. There were a few companies that did not take security seriously and left the front door wide open and unlocked – Home Depot and Sony. Both were subjects of big data breaches in 2014.
Counting on my fingers I see that 2014 maintained my 70 percent average. My next column, coming in a few hours will be my predictions for 2015. Based on reader comments from my last column I think you’ll be surprised by what I see on the technical horizon.
I would even give you a pass on #3, since you qualified it by saying it would happen if Elop got the CEO job. He didn’t, and they didn’t.
Not just a pass, but under basic rules of logic, he is allowed to count that one as correct.
In that case, I predict the world will end tomorrow, if the sun disappears.
Cringe only got 3/10 correct.
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#7 is not a prediction, therefore fail.
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#8 is a fail, a hack is not a trend toward netfix.
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#9 is a fail – cloud did not decline in 2014.
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#10 is a fail – nobody implemented smart cards in 2014.
Re #10 – I’m not sure you can claim victory there yet. You are correct in that they are probably inevitable, but they haven’t gained serious traction yet.
Oh, and you’re NOT the only pundit wh review’s his predictions – Jonathan Corbet over at the Linux Weekly News (http://lwn.net) has also been doing so for years.
Nope, put a HIT in that column. The credit card issuers told the merchants this past year they HAD to upgrade to chip and pin (EMV) by October 2015.
I guess his point is the switch was not in 2014. Maybe in 2015, we’ll see what actually happens in October.
Bob, I’m really glad you’ve kept producing your predictions, at one point I think you said you were going to stop doing it (that was a miss!). Even when you’re wrong it’s still a fascinating read.
#1 — Microsoft gets worse before it gets better. – MISS
After today’s announcement of no more free to the public ANS, you may have spoken too soon. The idea that ‘not enough people are using it so let’s charge for it’ doesn’t sound like a company on the right track with its customer base.
What’s ANS? A Google search was no help
ANS — http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2015/01/07/evolving-advance-notification-service-ans-in-2015.aspx
Thanks Dave, I did hear Steve Gibson mentioning that a few weeks ago. I’m not sure how useful it is anyway, since knowing that a patch will be available on patch Tuesday, doesn’t say whether or not it will create a problem for any specific computer. All you can do is wait for patch Tuesday, read about the finished patch, then decide whether and when to install it, possibly by testing on systems meant for testing.
Actually, you were correct on #4. Intel is now the fab for Altera’s (FPGA/CPLD company) high-end product. And in Altera’s latest and greatest offering, Stratix 10, they offer an embedded 64 bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. So, you were right.
Woohoo – 80%!
1998 was when I sent that email (from my long defunct io.com address) at the 6 month mark asserting you’d hit 6/10 that year. In the end, you got to 7/10, so that 70% record is pretty long-lasting.
so not just 12 years. More like 17. 🙂
#7 is coming true, courtesy of HBO’s streaming service. Traditional cable will be around for some time to come, however, because of ESPN and sports.
Comcast and ESPN are doing their utmost to drive away all of their customers.
I think they will be successful in the next 8 years.
Bob’s talking about physical plant. The viewer-facing UI on a set-top box doesn’t care much whether the MPEG broadcast stream is wrapped in DOCSIS or whatever other protocol. For Disney’s part, I could imagine them making great hullaballoo with interactivity features — if not first on ESPN, then on their other children’s networks.
Speaking of the devil, WOW! Cable just increased their basic cable charge by $2, apparently blaming it on contractual requirements to keep ESPN in their basic lineup. (Anyone else remember the term “shoveware”?) My neighbor, an older guy on disability income who only watches sports, switched to Dish and seems quite happy about it.
Just like AOL, waiting for the last customers to die. 😉
ESPN is testing direct to consumer via IP without cable through Dish’s SlingTV. SlingTV’s crown jewel in their offering is ESPN/ESPN2. It is a proxy test case for Disney to see just how many potential cord ‘shavers’ out there are hanging on right now to legacy accounts only for ESPN.
#9 – not a hit. You can’t say “This prediction is correct, but not yet” and claim a hit.
I predict I will arrive in Karachi on foot. I’m in London right now, and I’ve not even got shoes on. I’m sitting down, typing at my computer. But I’m pretty sure that I could be in Karachi, and I could arrive on foot if I wanted to – therefore, according to you, HIT! I AM IN KARACHI, HAVING ARRIVED ON FOOT!
Strangely comfortable and chair like, is this Karachi place…
No bookmaker would pay out on the terms you describe. We both know that #9 is a miss. If you’d put money on it, you’d be out of pocket and lamenting that your timescales were just too optimistic.
And the same with #10. Is the average American paying with RFID? No. They’re not even paying with chip & pin, according to the folks I know in America. And that’s reflected in all coverage I see on any news site on this topic.
In 2015 chip & pin becomes legally required – October, IIRC – and that means replacing card machines. No business wants to replace them twice, so in 2014 they all kept their old swipe-only machines wherever possible or chose not to enable RFID on their POS software (to keep consistency across multiple stores).
2015 will no doubt be the year of RFID in America, but only because it’s also the year of chip & pin.
So #10 misses for the same reason as #9 – optimistic timescales.
You got 50% for 2014. It may be hard for you to admit, but the facts just aren’t on your side here – 5 hits, 2 near misses, 3 misses. Still better than most prognosticators over a year period – better than many manage over a 3 month period – but not 70% hits.
I’m disappointed that you can’t admit that, and now can’t really trust your predictions for 2015 until you admit this.
I disagree. My credit card company sent me a new card a few months ago with a chip, and most retailers already accept it. In fact, some won’t let me swipe the magnetic stripe–they make me use the chip. It can’t just be my credit card company doing this.
I wonder where you use your card, and whether it’s a credit, not debit, card. I received my new Chase credit card this year with the chip and a new number, but nothing has changed at any of the stores I frequent. In fact, I don’t even have a PIN, just the new card.
My Bank of America Visa is Chip and Signature.
Exactly. Chip and signature, so nothing has changed in my world.
This probably varies by where you are in the US. In central Texas, only Walmart (that I’ve seen) has both the chip readers and the software to make it work with their back office systems. Several other stores have the readers, but not the software. The vast majority (mostly small businesses) don’t have either yet. This includes firms like Target and Home Depot, which certainly should know better at this point.
A LOT of retailers have been upgrading their payment terminals. Just because the legal stipulation comes in in October, doesn’t mean that businesses aren’t upgrading now. And EMV standards won’t be changing (not significantly, at any rate) between now and October so this thing about ‘upgrading twice’ is pure nonsense.
I’m curious why you do predictions? I haven’t bothered to read the article beyond the first few paragraphs, wondering if the answer is in there, so apologies if it’s in there later.
column inches.
He does predictions by popular demand. Whether he’s right or wrong, it’s educational for those of us into technology.
Just tossing this out on the floor for discussion…w/in 5 yrs, Microsoft gets acquired or merges with…? What is Nadella going to exploit in a way that Gates did 30 yrs ago w/ DOS then Windows/Office? Where does he go?
cloud (office 365, etc), server software, services maybe and of course bing!
Rumors of the death of Windows, Office and the pc in general have been greatly exaggerated.
The business model is changing though. Office switches to a subscriber model. Windows may too.
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As I understand it, Microsoft only could use the Nokia name for a limited time.
“Coming in a few hours”
Since Forbes – hours seem to have become days or weeks …
It was in Star Trek II where Spock said, “hours would seem like days…”
Sounds like EZM-77
Hi there! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing a few months of hard work due to no backup. Do you have any methods to stop hackers?|
Keep WordPress updated and don’t use plugins that don’t have an active update policy. Most WordPress hacks use unsafe third party plugins.
Dave Weigel also does an end-of-year prediction scoresheet: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2014-12-30/the-pundit-audit-2014
But Bob’s predictions concern stuff that matters.
#1 Microsoft.
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I’d count this as a Hit. Microsoft may have been laying foundations for improvement, but we’ve not seen them yet. Any time I’m asked to look at friend’s PCs that have Windows 8.1 I just end up banging my head! It’s a mess of an OS.
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If Windows 10 doesn’t bring back desktop computing to the desktop (or laptop) then your prediction will be spot on.
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Secondly, unless Microsoft moves to make their office suite more affordable the free ones like LibreOffice will start to seriously erode in to their market. We’re getting computers for $300, who’d spend another $140+ on top of that again just to write a few letters on?
#6 — Facebook transforms itself (or tries to) with a huge acquisition. HIT!
Sorry sir, you missed on this one. Yes, the company made a half dozen or so large acquisitions, and those may have a long term impact on the company and its core product.
But as of January 2015, the company is still primarily selling ads on the FaceBook social media network, and the end users see basically the same stuff.
How has FaceBook been transformed, internally or externally, just because they BEGAN to think outside their box?
Speaking of Forbes, did you have a falling out? Your articles seem to have been scrubbed from the website.
Use the search box. They’re still findable. But the comments section is unusable. You can comment, but no one will see it, not even you.
My annual prediction yet to come true: Microsoft will dump the Windows kernel and adopt the LINUX kernel with a Windows GUI and call it Windows.
Microsoft is still doing Windows 8, so I’d call him a failure.
#10 — Smart cards
Not a prayer. Folks have been claiming that smartcards were the future since the mid-80s (at least). There was a niche problem where they were the solution back before the Internet became everywhere. That time has gone. You are much better off using a Smartphone and live data access to do any possible validation.
The network-free, local smarts, local storage smartcard is a technology that has been “coming real soon” for decades and “soon” will never arrive.
I suspect the definition of smart card has changed over the years. “A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC) is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card Basically any card with a chip in it is considered “smart”, even if the chip does no more than the magnetic stripe. Chip and Pin is supposed to happen in October.
I feel like you’ve omitted one of your 2014 predictions:
“Final 2014 prediction: the end of the PC as we knew it”
https://www.cringely.com/2014/01/10/final-2014-prediction-end-pc-knew/
“The iPhone in your pocket will become your desktop whenever you are within range of your desktop display, keyboard and mouse. These standalone devices will be Apple’s big sellers in 2014 and big sellers for HP and Dell in 2015 and beyond. The next iPod/iPhone/iPad will be a family of beautiful AirPlay displays that will serve us just fine for at least five years linked to an ever-changing population of iPhones.”
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[…] You have to like a guy who can admit his mistakes….Unlike many prognosticators, Cringely also looks at his past predictions and shares what he got right…and wrong in 2014. […]
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