Yankee Group has released its annual report on predictions for the
new year. Offering a positive outlook for 2010, the firm reports that
while the economic recession has changed attitudes in the
communications sector, these changes are creating opportunities for
businesses smart enough to recognize, and act on, them.
“We cannot all remain scarred by the economic events of the last 26
months and miss out on the first fruits of the recovery,” Chris
Collins, a Yankee Group analyst and co-author of the report, said in a
Dec. 15 statement. “Companies that continue to adapt and innovate are
best positioned to prosper in the new decade.”
According to Collins, the economic situations in late 2008 and early
2009 changed the ways that consumers, enterprises and network builders
now think. Consequently, Yankee found that 66 percent of consumers say
they’ll spend less overall in 2010, while approximately 25 percent
expect to cancel or spend less on core connectivity services in the new
year.
Additionally, 20 percent of businesses say the economy has forced
“severe reductions” in their technology investments, while 83 percent
say the economy has had “some impact to severe impact” on their tech
spending.
Topping Yankee’s list for 2010 is the prediction that “cord-cutting
will double yet again in 2010,” with more consumers cancelling their
land-line phone service and relying entirely on mobile and mobile
broadband replacements.
Back
in March, the Centers for Disease Control — which calls landlines
to conduct its surveys — reported that households without landlines
were on the rise. While in 2007, 14.7 percent of U.S. households
relied entirely on mobile phones, in the first half of 2008, 17.5
percent — or one in six — of homes did.
Second on Yankee’s list is the increased likelihood of mobile
operators, whose profits are dropping, to begin offering more
no-subsidy and no-contract plans. (Gartner, too, in a Dec. 15 report, predicted a shortening of smartphone contract lengths.)
Third, is a predicted slipping of netbook sales. “While netbooks won
the battle for consumers’ hearts in 2009, they will ultimately lose the
war, as notebooks will take on similar form factors and similar prices
without such drastic compromises in processing power,” states the
report.
Intel began calling for as much in early June, when it introduced its ultra-low-voltage processors,
and manufacturers including Dell have delivered, with notebooks such as
the Vostro V13, which offers a near-netbook-low starting price of $449
and a weight of just 3.5 pounds, but can offer up to 4GB of DDR3
(double-data rate) memory.
No. 4 on Yankee’s list is the “consumerization of IT,” with 50
percent of enterprise smartphone purchases expected to be completed by
users, versus IT departments. And No. 5 is a nod to Google’s browser-based Chrome OS, which Yankee writes “won’t be a PC killer, but it will power a new range of must-have consumer devices.”
Rounding out the list, Yankee is also predicting that 33 percent of
businesses will invest in cloud-based IT services; that China-based
Huawei will become an early, predominant supplier of LTE equipment in
the United States; that telcos will act as intermediaries between
“cloud” environments; that startups, to the chagrin of
telecommunications companies, will be slower to offer investment-worthy
ideas, due to a lack of venture capital funding; and that telcos will
become more efficient by sharing network assets.
Finally, No. 11 on the list is that following new FCC rulings on U.S.
network neutrality, service providers worldwide will become more
transparent about internal traffic and management practices.
“As the crisis recedes, Yankee Group sees new opportunities coming to
the fore,” the report states. “The trick is recognizing those
opportunities in the murky haze of recovery.”
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