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To Our Readers
ANYBODY still pooh-poohing the soaring stock prices of dot coms and online hype in general got a splash of cold reality at last week's Pacific Basin Economic Conference here. Disrupt or be disrupted
Michael Butcher of Lucent Technologies Asia-Pacific laid it on the line: "E-commerce is destroying value (in old-economy businesses). No company or country is immune."
The experts at PBEC say the communications revolution is permanent and will only accelerate. The capabilities of technology will double every six to 18 months for the foreseeable future. "Its processes will disrupt you," Butcher said. "If you don't take part, someone will come along and destroy you with efficiency. You must disrupt yourself to survive."
Moreover, e-commerce is now old-hat. The new buzz is "m-commerce" - the "m" stands for mobile. It's based on the convergence of cell phones and Internet.
C.D. Tan of Motorola said wireless Internet connection is the "Next Wave." In three years there will be more than a billion cell phone users, Tan says. Many of these will be in China and Japan, where a combination Palm-computer and wireless-phone device is especially attractive. Western alphanumeric keyboards are actually obstacles to computing in Asian languages, he said.
These new online phones will handle email, display news reports, buy groceries, book tickets, bank, track stock portfolios and tackle thousands of other tasks now done less efficiently.
M-commerce will help drive global online business to $9.3 trillion a year by 2003, said Derek Williams, who works out of Oracle's Singapore office. Actually, according to Williams, offices themselves are passe. Companies are cutting loose from real estate. Fast moving e-businessmen can now stay connected and engaged with just the phones in their pockets.
John Paul DeJoria of John Paul Mitchell told business leaders they could be oysters or eagles. Oysters live safely in their hard shells, but they go nowhere. Eagles live risky lives in the treetops working hard to survive, but their boundaries are limitless.
"The eagle, not the oyster, is the symbol of America," DeJoria said.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
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