2005 – The Year in Review – H2

 

July: Intel hosts official EU visit

The world’s largest chipmaker recently played host to a series of raids by EU antitrust officials. A number of manufacturers and distributors also received a surprise visit. Rival AMD is at the root of this antitrust campaign, which has been running for 5 years, claiming that Intel has been offering rebates to its customers to encourage them not to consider AMD as an alternative. Apparently 3 confused looking blue masked men in dark body suits were seen leaving the backdoor of Intel’s offices via what appeared to be flying surf boards.

 

August: IT industry on holiday.

 

September: eBay successfully bids for Skype

Online auctioneer eBay has announced that it will buy phone revolutionary Skype, a favourite with the techno cost conscious, for $2.6bn. The synergies are not obvious, unless eBay plans to incorporate voice recognition into its trading platform, or it plans to promote context sensitive bid lots during Skype users’ telephone conversations.

 

October: Infosys tells it as IT will be

Culturally India, and Indian IT companies have, despite their success, taken a somewhat modest and graceful approach to their good fortune. It must be difficult to resist the urge to gloat when for example Tata doubled its net profits for the last quarter, whilst those of Infosys jumped 36%. But the latter’s CEO has been unable to contain himself and came over all bullish by announcing that Indian IT services providers will replace western rivals as industry leaders. He is probably right, and definitely not smart. This sort of provocation will have a galvanising effect on western rivals, and plays into the hands of protectionist governments.

 

November: Microoosoft

Bill Gates recently told the BBC that Microsoft plans to ‘eat Google’s lunch’, or something to that effect. It certainly has the financial reserves to do that in a number of different ways. Google should of course take note. When your business is aligned with Bill’s sights, it is usually just a matter of time before your business plan needs a complete overhaul. Though Microsoft has similar battles on a number of different fronts including: phone, TV, digital music, games, operating systems, development tools, open source and enterprise applications. Whether it has the resources to deal with all of these, only time will tell.

 

December: Googaol

Google has gazumped Microsoft by getting Time Warner to agree to sell a 5% stake in AOL for $1bn. Microsoft has been in delicate negotiations since January, seeing both itself and AOL as working together to dominate the online advertising space. This will no doubt irritate Bill and the gang, so I suspect Microsoft will redirect a disproportionate number of its troops to the ‘Search’ battlefront in 2006, with a view to halting/terminating Google’s advance.