Next year will prove to be an interesting year for a lot of vendors.
Market leaders like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft will face
their greatest challenges and strongest opportunities, new arrivals will
undoubtedly have us wondering why we hadn’t come up with a similar
billion dollar idea, and in the U.S., we’ll likely have an election
whose outcome will be controlled by computers for the first time.
Granted, some of the concerns coming this decade will likely cause all
of this to be trivial by comparison, but let’s look ahead to 2012
anyway.
Apple Litigation’r Us
We are still in the beginning rounds of Apple’s crusade against
Android and some of the most contentious challenges are yet to come. Tim
Cook, Apple’s current CEO, will have to perform in a role he was
ill-prepared for given it was designed around Steve Jobs, a guy who not
only was unique, but actually worked to remove anyone from Apple that he
thought could replace him. This was because he was scared of being
fired and was convinced up until the end that he would recover. Apple
has Intel’s ex top attorney running their litigation efforts, who is
considered to be one of the best in the business, but the courts likely
won’t want Apple to kill off their competitors so this will hardly be a
walk in the park. Expect to see Apple redefined by year end and we’ll
see if they can pull a rabbit out of the hat with their rumored TV
effort.
Facebook
The problem that Facebook will need to deal with this year is going
public, which can do horrid things to a company from regulation and
oversight to the distractions of instant mega-wealth. Mistresses,
substance abuse, reporting shenanigans, and other problems have
historically plagued firms that have gone through similar processes and
Facebook will get a ton of cash to manage in 2012. They’ll need to
anticipate and mitigate some of these instant wealth problems or they’ll
likely look back fondly on the way things were before going public. It
may sound great to be super wealthy, but a lot of families, executives,
and companies don’t survive it.
Google
Google appears to have taken Steve Jobs’ final advice to heart and
they appear to be focusing more and screwing up less. However, as we
exit this year, there is a major effort to cobble them with anti-trust regulations.
They have just been running to fast and loose and haven’t taken
governments anyplace seriously enough and that could hurt them badly in
2012. Still their advertising revenue near monopoly remains largely
untouched and they can take a lot of pain before the firm becomes
unhinged. This year is the year we’ll likely see if the company can grow
up to take full responsibility for its future and stop the practice of
jumping all over the map with regard to products and efforts most of
which are massively under-resourced. 2011 was a year full of mistakes; they can’t really afford another one like it.
Microsoft
Microsoft enters 2012 with three of their five pillar products at
risk. Windows 8 is a massive gamble that people want PCs and tablets to
merge and recall that their last, less forced, tablet effort didn’t go
well. IE is slipping in market share sharply year over year and if IE
and Windows go, so does Microsoft Office. I could argue that the
last two pillars, Windows Server and Exchange likely can’ t hold without
the other three, so if Microsoft fails this year, we actually could be
talking about the end of the company next year. Steve Ballmer will
likely either be Microsoft’s biggest hero or the guy that destroyed the
company by year end, depending on how well he resources platforms like
Windows, Windows Phone, IE, and Office 365. Given he, and the company,
have historically under-resourced similar efforts goes to just how
risky 2012 is likely to be for Ballmer in particular and Microsoft in
general.
IBM
This will likely be a break out year for IBM and they just made a series of forward looking predictions. Looking back on the predictions they made in 2007 for 2012,
they hit more than they missed, suggesting it is worthwhile to listen
to them. The company has a new CEO and they are heading back to CES with
technologies that could make us safer and more productive. IBM has led
with the Watson project and is driving cognitive computing. In short,
it appears they are moving to be the technology company again and for
this old IBMer, that is a really cool thing to watch. IBM is looking
pretty good.
Meg Whitman’s HP
Another big company undergoing change is HP. They still have a great
deal of mess left over after Mark Hurd left the company, but they have
stabilized their structure and are working to fix a number of the
internal problems like the lack of a succession plan. The next CEO is
expected to be groomed from inside for instance. In the end, 2012 is
likely to both define HP and Meg Whitman’s futures and both likely know
it. They appear driven to make a positive change and 2012 will likely be
when we find out if Whitman’s HP can rise out of the drama that has
surrounded he company for the last decade.
Wrapping Up
2012 looks to be an amazing year of change. Google still seems to be
on the unfortunate path of emulating Microsoft’s historic mistakes and
Microsoft is on the cusp of either re-emerging or collapsing depending
on its executive leadership. IBM is shooting for the stars and HP is
undergoing a major makeover. Facebook will face its greatest challenge
yet, too much financial success too fast, and they won’t survive it
unscathed.
Rob Enderle in Business on December 29
