Apple To Double Its Market-share By 2011

Gartner, Inc. has highlighted 10 key predictions of events and developments that will affect IT and business in 2008 and beyond.

The predictions highlight areas where executives and IT professionals need to take action in 2008. The full impact of these trends may not appear this year, but executives need to act now so that they can exploit the trends for their competitive advantage.

1. By 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers. Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success.
2. By 2012, 50 per cent of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favour of other devices. Even though notebooks continue to shrink in size and weight, traveling workers lament the weight and inconvenience of carrying them on their trips.
3. By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported.
4. By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license. With software as service (SaaS), the user organisation pays for software services in proportion to use.
5. By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service. Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites and still receive the same response times.
6. By 2009, more than one third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods.
7. By 2010, 75 per cent of organisations will use full life cycle energy and CO2 footprint as mandatory PC hardware buying criteria. Most technology providers have little or no knowledge of the full life cycle energy and CO2 footprint of their products.
8. By 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status.
9. By 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and services acquisitions made by IT.
10. Through 2011, the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will grow 100-fold over 2006 levels. The technology lets users send a file of a 3-D design to a printer-like device that will carve the design out of a block of resin. read full story