Ben Thompson on the state of technology in 2018: despite the market dominance of the big consumer-facing companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon), the prospects for continued disruption and innovation are dim: there is little venture investment in the pipeline, the current moats are just too large, the incumbency advantage too steep for potential competitors.
On the other hand,
In contrast, consider the enterprise software market: here the Internet has very much lived up to its billing, unleashing a torrent of innovative companies made possible by cloud computing, that are challenging lumbering incumbents up-and-down their product lines. And, to their credit, some of those incumbents, like Microsoft, are responding in kind, dramatically overhauling their core strategies and releasing new products and services that are innovative in their own right.
Quick, what’s the most valuable company in the world?
In summary,
This, then, is the state of technology in 2018: the enterprise market is thriving, and the consumer market is stagnant, dominated by the “innovations” that a few large behemoths deign to develop for consumers (and probably by ripping off a smaller company). Meanwhile a backlash is brewing on both sides of the political spectrum, but with no immediately viable outlet through competition or antitrust action, the politics surrounding technology simply becomes ever more rancid.
Prediction: this political backlash will turn out to be one of the few area of common cause for conservatives and liberals. (Note the reaction to Amazon’s HQ2 selection on both the right and the left). As to there being “no immediately viable outlet through competition or antitrust action”, count me skeptical. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
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