Tech Innovation Still Alive and Well
“There is every reason to believe that the current economic downturn will not significantly slow tech innovation,” opines our tech analyst Patrick Cox. “Important new tech products will continue coming to market. There are several reasons I’m able to make this prediction confidently.
“One is that tech innovation traditionally saves money. Successive generations of technologies have always been cheaper than their predecessors. In the tech biz, he who hesitates finds himself overpriced and obsolete.
“Even when I lived and worked in Silicon Valley, there were only a few tech pundits I paid much attention to. One was Michael S. Malone. He wrote a very good piece recently about the innovation — if you get a minute, you can check out the full article here. Let me quote a few paragraphs, but you really should read the whole thing:
“‘The great companies of high technology are at the starting line and waiting for the pistol to fire. When they come out of the blocks, it’s going to be a dazzling sight… and our lives will change in the process.
“‘For the electronics industry, driven by the unrelenting pressure of Moore’s law, downturns are merely interregnums between booms. They are a time for consolidating resources and staff, abandoning low-performing product and market ventures… and most of all, stealing the march on competitors by gearing up new products for the return of demand.’
“Don’t let yourself get too depressed,” concludes Patrick, “by the mess government has created. We’ve done well recently with countercyclical biotech stocks, but it’s important to remember that this may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pick up IT stock at historic bargain rates.”
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