The Bloor Perspective: Concorde and conferencing, that IPR retreat and Xbox lessons

Last month saw the final flight of Concorde as declining bookings made its operation economical and British Airways finally threw in the towel. Often important trends go unremarked until their implications are brought home to us in a concrete example. The interesting question is whether teleconferencing and travel substitution is the smoking gun for Concorde's demise and if there are wider implications.

The fall in Concorde's popularity has been variously ascribed to 9/11, the Paris crash and the SARS outbreak. Each of these events made the prospect of long-distance travel less popular with business travellers but they didn't change travelling habits by themselves. The important difference is that travellers now have a choice - they can choose to spend considerable time, energy and money travelling or they can substitute videoconferencing for travel.

A recent survey by Wainwright Research showed how the use of teleconferencing technologies increased after 9/11. Before 9/11, in-person meetings accounted for 54.2 per cent of meetings. After 9/11, in-person meetings decreased 16.2 per cent to account for a minority of 45.4 per cent of meetings. The jump after 9/11 has levelled off but according to analysts at UBS Warburg, business travel has fallen three times more in this downturn than in the past.

Not many of us have travelled on Concorde but many of us do use the motorways. As the government prepares to invest in more motorway capacity, traffic projections have to be right. The tendency is to project future trends based on what we know about the past. This is like driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirrors. The current approach of projecting road traffic from past indicators such as numbers of households and car ownership runs the risk of falling into this trap. The point is that the future is not like the past. It is often different in ways that we should try to foresee.

Travel substitution will be an increasingly important factor affecting traffic volumes. The indications are that people in future will be ready, willing and able to substitute teleconferencing for travel. Research conducted by NERA for the RAC Foundation, Motors and Modems Revisited, predicted a 15 per cent cut in commuter traffic by the year 2020 through teleworking, with similar savings in business, shopping and leisure travel, and freight movements due to other new technologies.

When the teleconferencing revolution starts to effect road travel, a leading indicator will be the level of congestion on the M25. The western section of the M25, the most congested motorway in the UK, carries a high proportion of people travelling to and from high-tech industries in the Thames Valley. Many these workers (estimated at 40 per cent) can substitute teleconferencing for car travel and anecdotal evidence shows they are already doing so. As travel substitution takes off, will the traffic planners take note of this in time to change their road investment plans?

*Why, WIPO?*

WIPO is one of the 16 specialised agencies of the United Nations system of organisations. It administers 23 international treaties dealing with different aspects of intellectual property protection. WIPO is an international organisation dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. These works - intellectual property - are expanding the bounds of science and technology and enriching the world of the arts. Through its work, WIPO plays an important role in enhancing the quality and enjoyment of life and helps create real wealth for nations.

Given its background and mandate it is surprising that it scrapped its first meeting on "open and collaborative" projects. After all, open source software does indeed rely on intellectual property rights. It cannot exist without them. It is, therefore, bemusing that the US Director of International Relations for the US Patent and Trademark Office apparently opposed such a meeting, claiming that such a meeting would run against the mission of WIPO to promote intellectual property rights. At least one of the major US software companies, probably beginning with the letter 'M', is reported to have lobbied against the holding of such a meeting. It is curious that WIPO should have acceded to such 'requests'.

Leaving aside the demand by commercial organisations for so called 'open source' software products, governments, government organisations and agencies are increasingly seeking open source software products as cheaper alternatives to commercial software products, ultimately to the benefit of nations' taxpayers. So WIPO, why did you scrap this meeting?

*Player 1:Power PC, Player 2:Itanium?*

The news broke last week that Microsoft will be using IBM's PowerPC chip in the next version of the Xbox. Yes, that's chip that is the core of the Apple. IBM is expected to combine the functionality of other chips (particularly for graphics) to build what Microsoft requires. Compatibility with the old Xbox will be provided by emulation technology. Microsoft's move has lots of implications...

For Microsoft: Microsoft clearly intends for the Xbox to become a lot more than a games machine - indeed it intends it to become the central server in the middle of the complex of devices that will one day define home entertainment. The Xbox is also important because it is Linux-proof. Microsoft may not have been delighted to give IBM this boost but clearly concluded it had no choice.

For Sony: It clearly has a head-to-head battle with Microsoft on its hands.

For IBM: It means that IBM is winning its battle with Intel for the 64-bit chip market. IBM had already got Nintendo's business and now it has the Xbox. If you add Apple into the mix you have serious volume chip production. This is going to help IBM's server business too.

For Intel: Intel is in trouble with its Itanium chip. It now sits in the middle of a pincer movement with AMD on one side offering x86 compatibility and 64-bits and IBM on the other with a mature 64-bit chip that is proving to be a winner in the games market and on the alternative PC. Intel's volume market is under serious threat.

For HP: HP threw its hand in with Intel, betting heavily on Itanium. This now looks like the wrong bet. Where else can HP go?

For Dell: Dell has lined up with Intel for as long as it has existed. It may now feel obliged to consider the AMD alternative.

For Apple: You can almost hear Steve Jobs laughing.

For Linux: Linux runs on everything anyway. It is pretty well chip-agnostic. However, we would not be surprised to see Linux PCs emerging driven by PowerPC chips some time in the near future. What does that mean? PCs that can't run Windows?