The new year is less than two weeks away. So:
Search:
Google will lose market share to
almost everyone but mainly A9.com, Alexa, Ask, Clusty, MSN and
Yahoo. I would say that by the end of '06, Google's market share of
pure search (done through Google.com) will be down at least 4%.
In terms of stocks, I think Yahoo
or Amazon are likely to outperform Google by a wide margin.
After nearly an 18-month lull,
I'll finally have some more ADR recommendations on
www.adrinvestor.com
Google's stock price will be below
its 2005 peak.
Alexa will change (almost
completely) the dynamics of search.
MSN Live could be a total flop
Technology
Novell could start gaining some
traction in sales of Linux as well as stock price; is likely to
outperform Red Hat.
Sun Microsystems is likely to do
well – in terms of stabilizing Unix sales, increasing storage
sales and sales of Niagara.
FireFox market share gain will
stabilize around 15-18% globally from around 10% in December 05.
Windows Vista will be the biggest
disaster in Microsoft's OS history. The operating system is too
taxing on the hardware and hence machines bundled with Vista will be
as expensive, if not more, than Mac X. My guess is that PC prices
could be at least $100 more because of more memory and processing
requirements.
Apple's Mac X will continue
gaining market share and could easily top 5% of global shipment –
partly because the machines will be very competitively priced
compared with HP and Dell.
Linux will gain market share as
well, this time at the expense of Vista. The price difference
between a Vista PC and a PC installed with Linux will be at least
$200. So, on desktops, the gains will come from more low end sales.
HP will increase its share of PCs.
Acer will continue marching into
Europe, Asia and even the U.S. at the expense of Dell.
Lenovo should do slightly better
than the industry.
Dell would do slightly worse than
the industry.
Misc
GM is likely to get closer to
bankruptcy.
Hyundai and Toyota will continue
to be the most exciting car companies.
Ford may announce some senior
level management change – they will continue to flounder in the
U.S. and Europe.
Finance and Economics
Returns
on S – between 2% and 8%.
Emerging markets will outperform
the U.S. and Europe.
Japan will outperform the U.S. –
returning close to 20% returns
Chinese stocks will do very well
Emerging Market bonds five year
streak should come to an end and will do poorly
Publishing
Blogs will continue to gain
popularity. Technorati, which currently searches 23 million blogs
will have more than 35 million.
Blogs will start consolidating
i.e. there will be blogs that will have mass following.
Newspapers will continue to lose
circulation; they will focus more on their Website to prevent
readers switching to blogs – they will succeed in terms of higher
Web viewer ship but fail in generating revenues.
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