Tech investment cycle for 2013 and beyond (Source: Market Watch - Read the complete article there!) - Why investors shouldn’t be betting on the stocks of companies whose revenue-growth models run after old pattern
It used to be a lot easier to judge exactly where we were in a tech investment cycle, until Apple Inc. and other tablet and smartphone makers disrupted a 30-year pattern. Before the rise of the iPhone, iPad and Android-based mobile devices, the purchasing of new technologies by businesses had held to a consistent pattern for three decades.
But that model has been turned on its head, because the rise of mobile connectivity and the slow death of the personal-computer market are slowly fusing the enterprise and consumer markets.
In the old pattern, chip makers like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. bought chip equipment from the likes of Applied Materials Inc., Novellus Systems Inc. and KLA-Tencor. Computer makers like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. put those chips into PCs they sold to businesses. Enterprises then bought networking gear from Cisco Systems Inc. and others to tie all those PCs together, and storage equipment from EMC Corp. and others. Finally came the enterprise software, usually from International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., SAP AG and/or Adobe Systems Inc. (and usually installed by business and IT consultants), which ultimately allowed businesses to extract value from their investments.
The beginning of a new cycle would usually start with the release of more-powerful chips.
Paradigm shift : Yet new chips are no longer the most important driver of an upgrade cycle. The main force for this is the proliferation of ever more-powerful apps running on mobile devices.
After 30 years of integrating wave after wave of new technologies, most companies don’t run their businesses in any way that resembles their old management processes. That’s why investors shouldn’t be betting on the stocks of companies whose revenue-growth models pretend they do.