So its official, the world’s worst financial crisis since 1929. As we speak, bankers are hurling themselves out of tall buildings in New York, London Frankfurt and Tokyo. Are we talking ourselves into a recession by the hour? Is it all self induced delirium caused by dodgy financiers lending money they did not have to people who could not afford to borrow it.
It took the web and telecom industries years to recover for the dot com and telecom crashes around the millennium but now both are on a roll with the industry investing billions into new service delivery platforms, networks and systems to deliver faster, better and cheaper services. So what does it all mean? Does it mean a slowdown in transformation to the kind of services we keep seeing at trade shows but continue to elude us like mobile TV and mobile advertising? When we are finally getting the kind of access network speeds that support the new breed of services does it all slow down again? What happens to industry consolidation and major M&A activities like Microsoft / Yahoo?
Or is credit crunch actually good news for cash rich players? Telecom and cable players are usually big cash generators. Does the credit crunch give them an advantage over rising stars whose value is all on their stock price rather than their earnings? Will the world’s financial crisis throw another joker into the pack of who wind and who loses in the great service convergence race?
Answers on the back of a used $100 dollar bill please - to be kept under my mattress!
Posted
03-18-2008 9:12 AM
by
Keith Willetts