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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
2002 in review: Not perfect, but it sure beat 2001

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
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Welcome to my 2002 Year in Review column, which I feel very safe in asserting you are reading here first. 2002 was a better year than the one just past--unless, of course, you hate Microsoft, love Linux, or were counting on a huge decrease in the amount of spam that fills your e-mail inbox. But other than that, things were better.

Who would have expected the Nasdaq to close the year over 2,300? Sure, it's not the growth we saw in the late 1990s, but it's still a very healthy recovery, now that the recession seems to have run its course. Too bad about those airline bankruptcies, though.

Do you think Nokia's proposed acquisition of Motorola will go through? I am not sure.

I WOULD HAVE expected the interest in security to have waned more, now that 9/11/01 is over a year behind us. But the continued terrorist threat, along with ongoing hacks, viruses, and worms, is still keeping IT managers edgy.

It's amazing they were able to get the NYSE up and running only a day after the big crash. I suspect the investigation will show it was an insider hack, and we'll never know how much money was involved.

PC sales improved, but not until the second half of the year. Hewlett-Packard's abortive acquisition of Compaq, which died a lingering death, left both companies in pretty bad shape.

Amazingly, HP boss Carly Fiorina didn't have the grace to resign when the deal fell apart. But the betting is that on the next stormy day, the ghosts of Hewlett, Packard, or more likely both, will strike her down with bolts of lightning for her part in ruining the "HP Way."

BOTH HP AND COMPAQ were weak going in and weaker coming out of 2002. It might have been better if the deal had gone through--at least then one company would have disappeared quickly, rather than leaving us to watch two former stalwarts wither away. One of them will come steaming back, eventually, and I am betting it will be a post-Fiorina HP.

Computer-maker Michael Dell and what he's called his "delightfully consistent" company have done very well, despite all this economic turmoil. But the real surprise--and I'm talking about the most amazing company in the industry--is IBM. It just keeps chugging along! Yes, it has its ups and downs, to be sure, but for a company that should have been mortally wounded so many times, Big Blue is truly remarkable.

The changes made in the Microsoft antitrust settlement may have brought the remaining states in on the deal, but didn't really increase Redmond's pain very much. It was nice, however, that the civil settlement--the billion dollars for education (and killing Apple)--was redone in such a way as to reduce the competitive advantage created by the money it created for Microsoft. Not very much, but at least Apple lives to fight another day.

APPLE IS IN especially good shape, now that Steve Jobs has announced--well, merger isn't the word--the deal linking Apple and Sony, essentially at the hip. The companies remain separate, but are cross-licensing all "relevant" technology--whatever that means--and sharing the spoils. It's interesting to see the most interesting companies in consumer electronics working together.

It's time to start getting ready for CES 2003, which has taken center stage now that Comdex has been a ghost town for two consecutive years. The first disaster they could blame on 9/11, but what about the non-attendance at the 2002 show?

The digital camera boom seems to have subsided a bit, but now that wireless networks are more XP-capable, it's nice to see more and more homes going unwired for networking.

THE FLAP ABOUT MICROSOFT shutting off all unsigned drivers seems to have died down. But who can blame them? Bad drivers are a major cause of crashes, and if Microsoft is willing to certify the good ones--for anybody who submits them--why should bad drivers be allowed to spoil the fun?

I wish I could be sad about CEO Michael Armstrong being tossed from AT&T's sinking ship, but this is one time I am glad the captain went first.

It's too bad Steve Case retired as chairman of AOL Time Warner, but it makes sense considering that Time Warner has become the truly dominant force in the company. If they had it to do over, I bet neither side would want to merge again.

It's pretty clear we've all finally agreed that Linux isn't a desktop operating system. While server sales continued to grow--though more at Sun's expense than Microsoft's--whatever momentum existed for the open-source OS running on your desktop PC seems to have disappeared.

SUN'S LIBERTY ALLIANCE had the intended effect of bringing Microsoft Passport at least somewhat into line. Or at least the whole .Net thing seems to have slowed considerably. I think companies are realizing what a double-edged sword this global authentication thing can become.

So there you have it: the high points of the technology world in 2002. It was, overall, a much better year than 2001, though not the full recovery we were all hoping for. Still, the layoffs have stopped, VCs are handing out money again, and it looks like 2003 will finally be a "normal" year--or at least the year when we finally discover what it means to be normal in the post-Internet bust, post-9/11 world.

What do you think will be the most significant events of 2002? Does my outlook jibe with yours? TalkBack to me!

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