Prediction 5: No IPO for Facebook
Companies go public for many reasons but the two that are most common are: 1) to raise capital for further expansion, and; 2) to secure the wealth of the founders. Some companies go public for different reasons, like Microsoft’s IPO back in 1986 that was literally forced by excessive secondary trading of company shares. Gates and Shirley decided to accept the burden of going public because it wasn’t all bad, but they didn’t seek it because they didn’t need the money.
Neither does Facebook.
SEC rules say that once a company has more than 500 shareholders it has to file the same financial disclosures as any public company, which is a pretty big administrative burden and a […]
What’s going to happen with TiVO? The pioneering Digital Video Recorder company is still in business with around a million subscribers and it has lately been settling patent infringement cases with big companies like Echostar and — just this week — with AT&T, but the longer term prospects for the company are dim. Yes, they’ll likely rake in hundreds of million more in settlements from companies including Verizon, but at the same time their subscriber base is dwindling and a point will come when their hardware will simply disappear as the company loses manufacturing economies of scale. That is unless they want to start shipping each new unit with a $100 bill attached — something […]
If Apple gives up its position of industry leadership in 2012 the only company capable of assuming that role is Amazon.com. What other company is there? In the PC space giants like HP and Dell are good followers, not leaders. Intel doesn’t even see itself in such a leadership role. Microsoft is having trouble just holding onto what it has already while Google is a herd of cats. Oracle is too enterprise-centric and everyone else is too darned small. That leaves Amazon.
2012 will be a year of great transition in the technology industry with the big changes coming more on the corporate level than in products. Sure, Windows 8 is on its way as are any number of new products, services, and whole companies, but the major story playing-out is who will lead the mobile transition? Will Apple continue its resurgence even without Steve Jobs? Will Microsoft retain its market share dominance and find a way to translate that into the mobile market as PCs continue to whither? Will Google beat Facebook? Will Facebook beat Google? Will some tablet dethrone the iPad? How will the industry look a year from today? I think that every one […]