The third quarter this year was a good quarter for looking at future technologies apparently. Many of the companies we follow held either their large event of the year or strategic meetings in which they unveiled secret plans. In many cases we were treated to extravagant technology promises.
Google I/O of course was wild with magical watches and instant 3D envi¬ronments. But, the company to watch is PTC, which is steadfastly reinventing itself. The company is building tools for developing IoT products and you know, that’s just brilliant. Everyone is talking about the millions and millions of these things out there and then PTC says, well alrighty you’ve got to design and build all those millions of things don’t you?
Intel played against the trend a bit because the company wants to hit back against the perception that PCs are dying and they have no more fervent partner in that wish than their erstwhile pals, Microsoft. But while both compa¬nies are trying to protect their core mar¬kets, the base of all their riches, they’ve both been pretty aggressive about rede¬signing the company from the inside. Intel at IDF looks absolutely nothing like the Intel of Paul Ottellini and Craig Barrett. There were powerful women in the company but they didn’t grace the IDF stage much but more than that Intel is dramatically changing its strat¬egy. Finally, the company is looking be¬yond the CPU and looking at the entire system for opportunity. But don’t mis¬take any of this for softness, Intel still intends to win every battle, it’s just got new weapons.
Likewise we see Microsoft doing much the same. The company has rec¬ognized that it needs more than Win¬dows to survive and it has even stopped playing hardball as far as price goes. As a result, small device makers with challenging margins are able to use Windows and compete against Android based devices. Too bad.
The message from the quarter and for the future is this: be strong, but be flexible and look ahead.