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John Burbedge reports on the special SME100 Business Breakfast Briefing held last month at the Royal Berkshire Conference Centre in Reading
Business Breakfast Briefing Get ready for the internet of everything
The fast-growing move to mobile internet connectivity is 'the biggest destructive force in technology today' and is radically changing the way people work and live throughout the world
“It is changing all the established companies in our sector and making kings of some like Apple and ARM, destroying the business models of many others, and will be the major destructive factor for years to come.”
Those were the words of Richard Holway MBE*, chairman of TechMarketView and a leading analyst of the UK software and IT services market, as he updated Thames Valley businessmen about current technology trends.
Holway said that back in 2003 he had coined a ‘Martini moment’ term to illustrate his forecast that we were moving towards the ability to access the internet “anytime, anyplace, anydevice”. Now it was actually happening.
The internet-connected mobile market is soaring, Holway revealed.
In 2000 no-one
had a mobile device capable of wireless access to the internet. Today, of the 2.2 billion internet capable devices in the world, about one billion (40%) are mobile devices. By 2020, of the 11 billion estimated internet capable devices, 10 billion will be mobile, he claimed.
During the 2020s, Holway predicted there could be one trillion devices in the world connected to the internet, effectively creating a global ‘internet of everything’ lifestyle – to which businesses will need to have adjusted.
Technological change had already changed the fortunes of several former household name companies through the years, and more recently provided opportunities for the rapid rise of others such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, Holway noted. “And diversity of performance in the technology sector is getting more pronounced every year.”
Currently, as a mature industry, the technology sector is in a deflationary period where the focus is on using technology to save money. “For example, the whole
reason that people go to cloud is that it saves enterprises and consumers money.”
For similar reasons, the BYOD trend was being favoured by many companies. “Buying employees mobile phones or laptops will soon be as out of date as giving them a company car.”
A self-confessed ‘builder’, Holway admitted he liked to start new projects and make things happen, enjoyed helping others to build their companies. He also claimed that losing his company job was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He decided never to work for anyone but himself again, which allowed him to follow his passion for IT and opened the door to a host of fresh opportunities.
Holway also passed on the lessons he had learned about running a successful business:
• Cashflow is king – “It’s the number 1 thing that I monitor.”
• There is nothing wrong with making a profit.
• Involve customers in funding your business, developing products.
• Be bold. (Why not ask for payment in advance, in return for a discount?)
• Sometimes an order is worth more than cash in market confidence terms.
• Use third-party equity investment as a last resort.
“Doing it for the money is not a business plan,” Holway said. “Being the best is more satisfying than being the biggest; being passionate about building the best widget is better than being the richest. Any company run by passionate people, almost always does better.”
And Holway had an encouraging message for entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs. “Historically, recessions are extremely good times for developing new businesses.” He likened downturns to severe storms that blow down trees. “They open up whole new areas for saplings to grow. And, it’s much easier to build a new business, particularly in technology, if you don’t have any past baggage.”
*Richard Holway is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Prince’s Trust and was awarded an MBE for services to young people in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Richard Holway addresses the audience
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THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – OCTOBER 2012
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