Insight

The end of the year is upon us and it has been a challenging one. As expressed by my colleague Jimmy Suen in the accompanying article, there are still economic challenges ahead even though consensus is that we are on the road (albeit a rocky one) to recovery.

It is interesting at this stage to look back at our industry and reflect on where the opportunities will lie in the coming year. While there are prospects for some improvement across the board. Is there one particular area that perhaps may be a catalyst that may pull our high tech industry back into the high growth path?

Personally, I feel that we are possibly on the cusp of a technology boom led by the proliferation of mobile devices, the most prominent is of course the iPhone. While the mobile revolution has been fermenting for many years, it seems that we have finally reached a level where the infrastructure, applications, content and devices are all coming together and the industry is ready accelerate. So far though, we have seen the potential of this mobile capability used mainly by the consumer.

However, where its potential will be fully realised is when business starts to use it in a big way for commercially related applications. I believe we are close to it and should see this in the coming year. What this means for our careers is the opportunity to target not just the mobile devices but the whole ecosystem that supports it, be it infrastructure, applications services and so on . Technology Companies from start ups to conglomerates are investing and end users are actively developing their strategies. We need to plan our own strategies to address this.

Best wishes to everyone for the coming holiday season!