What are the odds that the next Google, Meta or Amazon--big new leaders of new markets--will be one of the leaders of the present market, breaking from historical patterns?
Historically, we can argue that the leaders of each era of computing were different from the leaders of the prior era. The leaders in the mainframe era (1945-1980) included IBM, Honeywell and Burroughs.
In the succeeding personal computer era, the leaders were Apple, Microsoft and Dell.
The era that follows the “PC” period is more contested. Some might say it is the internet era. Others might say the mobile or cloud computing eras also followed since 2006 or 2007. It also is possible that mobile and cloud computing are merely evolutions of a single internet (or other name we do not universally agree upon) era.
In the internet era, we might argue the leaders were Google, Amazon and Meta. Some might argue the internet era largely overlaps, since about 2007, with the mobile era, whose leaders might be said to include Apple, Google (Android) and Samsung.
The cloud computing era might include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud.
And that might suggest a possible outcome that reflects our current inability to define the present era (internet, mobile, cloud computing). The leaders in segments or eras tend to overlap with each other. That might suggest there are phases to a single era.
Some believe the next era will center on artificial intelligence, perhaps led by generative AI frontier models. And one characteristic of the model business is its capital intensity.
And keep in mind that LLMs are updated, as are operating systems. Creating one version of a model necessarily includes t he necessity of updating that model every year to three years or so.
And note: leaders include many of the same names we see in the internet, mobile or cloud computing “eras.” OpenAI is the most-prominent “new” name, but the others are familiar: Google, Meta, AWS and Microsoft, for example.
And that suggests a possibility: the leaders of the generative AI era of computing might well be one or more of the firms said to lead in the internet, mobile or cloud computing eras as well.
That might break a pattern we have seen since the mainframe era. On the other hand, there is some divergence of opinion about which “era” computing now is in. But whether we focus on internet, cloud or mobility-based nomenclature, many of the leaders are the same.
So though we might not know for some time to come, it is possible that the leaders of the internet era could be the leaders (mostly) of the next era, the exception being OpenAI.
It might also be worth noting that since the PC arrived, eras have been defined by applications and platforms rather than hardware. But many observers might agree that a single computing era can last 30 years to 40 years.
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