台灣顯示器產業的下一步

光電小組執行秘書石大成
台灣顯示器產業的下一步　現行競爭策略與未來技術前景
（記者邵琮淳／台北） 2004/12/31

　經濟規模與品牌是台灣面板廠目前的競爭瓶頸

　未來台灣TFT LCD面板的產業發展有幾點值得注意；從經營面看，將是「經濟規模」與「品牌」的競爭，這從日、韓發展即可看出端倪。一般而言，若無持續擴大生產規模因應生產效益及成本競爭力，便會面臨合併或競爭力下滑的挑戰。如早期日本東芝（Toshiba）及松下（Matsushita），2004年的愛普生（EPSON）及三洋（SANYO）合併液晶事業部門，日立（Hitachi）與松下、東芝成立新公司合建六代廠等，都說明「經濟規模」將是未來一項非常重要的競爭關鍵因素。

　另外在「品牌」競爭，我們知道面板將來是因應電視及家電需求，電視市場是未來面板市場能否持續成長的關鍵。而消費者使用特定電視品牌的習慣根深蒂固，不同於IT產品應用著重價格，日本電視機廠商紛尋求可掌握且穩定的電視面板來源，所以SONY和三星（Samsung）合建七代面板廠，日立與松下、東芝合建六代廠，他們為何這麼做，關鍵還是在維持電視市場中的「品牌價值」，不讓品牌價值陷於與IT產品一樣，淪落到只剩下成本的競爭。

　在以往的IT產業中，台灣廠商最擅長以經濟規模來降低生產成本，以大量產出來創造利潤，但成本下降終有盡頭，當無法維持適當毛利時，產業將開始外移。但這僅適用於IT產業，一旦到了必須結合品牌發展的電視產業生態，在發展策略上就要有些變革才行。

　強化與IT廠合作或購買品牌都是可以考慮的方式

　品牌發展一向非台灣廠商擅長，在IT產業雖有acer、BenQ投入不少資金發展，但與日本SONY、東芝等家電業廠商比較，我們還有很大的發展空間。台灣面板廠要突破未來的困境，還是須從品牌著手，未必得自己花錢發展品牌，除與全球知名電視品牌廠商維持良好關係外，更可利用台商與IT產業知名品牌建立密切合作關係，積極協助IT廠商進入電視市場，想辦法打破電視品牌以日韓為主的生態，如此面板廠商才能與IT廠商攜手闖出一片天。

　另外，比較直接的方式，就是與知名品牌結合因應未來「經濟規模」與「品牌」競爭，如早期的韓國LG與荷蘭的飛利浦（Philips），飛利浦是歐洲、非洲及中東地區最知名的品牌；鴻海多年前收購美國最大的知名連接器公司，近期則有TCL與法國知名家電Thomson結合、聯想收購IBM PC部門的策略模式。不過收購品牌並不是為了品牌而品牌，台灣面板廠缺的並不是產能，而是品牌帶來的訂單、行銷及商譽。

　此外，在技術發展與製造生產上，TFT LCD雖已是成熟技術，但是成熟的技術並不表示是最好的技術，因此未來如果有一個更好、更簡單的顯示技術成功，TFT會面臨新的競爭。所以，TFT LCD面板廠應該持續在製造流程上加以創新與簡化，以維持競爭力。

　投資腳步上　台面板廠做好follower角色即可

　也許TFT LCD投資的資本相對於其他產業是非常大的，六代以上的TFT LCD生產線投資金額已不亞於12吋晶圓廠，但就整個TFT LCD的應用來說，未來都還有非常高的發展潛力，韓國和日本廠商的積極投資策略，也促使台灣廠商不得不積極面對。就台灣廠商在次世代的投資而言，現階段必須要做一個非常好的跟隨者（follower）角色，在產能擴充腳步上也許可放慢速度，但在新世代生產線的投資進度上是不容延遲的，若在次世代生產線的投資被韓國和日本拉開差距，未來將很難再追上去。由於新世代生產線投資金額越來越大，借錢的銀行、創投等投資人，將會選擇有競爭力的廠商來進行投資，所以競爭力較弱的廠商將由市場決定去留。

　OLED可望成為下一個交棒的顯示技術

　就全球平面顯示器市場分佈而言，目前重心主要集中在TFT LCD；就市場規模而言，約佔了全球平面顯示器市場規模7成以上。在電槳顯示器（PDP）領域，日韓廠商最近開始傾全力發展PDP產業，主要是看好電漿電視（PDP TV）能在大尺寸電視機市場，特別是40吋以上的電視機市場，在這1～2年內也許要比液晶電視（LCD TV）具成本優勢，但未來透過達到經濟規模的生產效率、液晶電視規格標準化的制定及更有效率且完整的市場供應鏈，電漿電視將受到液晶電視的挑戰。

　全球PDP產值在2004年約佔全球平面顯示器的比重約7.6％，隨日韓廠商大幅擴充產能，據光電科技工業協進會（PIDA）推估到2007年將可佔全球平面顯示器的比重約13.0％，成長力非常驚人。在TN／STN方面，雖在全球平面顯示器的市場規模比重逐漸下降，但是在一些較低階產品的應用方面， TN／STN還是有其存在的價值。

　被視為下一波顯示技術的明星—有機電激發光顯示器（OLED），在技術及材料瓶頸逐漸突破後，2005年主動式OLED將重新在市場出現，在色彩及穩定度表現將有機會擄獲許多消費者的心，不過在 2～3年內，主動式的OLED面板，在價格上可能還無法跟TFT LCD及彩色STN面板價格匹配。

　而微型顯示器方面，目前主要應用在背投影電視，在SONY／EPSON的高溫多晶矽（HTPS）技術和儀器（TI）的DMD技術的挾擊下，反射式矽基液晶（LCoS）能激發出多少市場火花，將是未來技術消長的觀察重點。背投影電視、液晶電視及電漿電視最大差異在於背投影電視未來將生產更大尺寸電視，不需再作新世代生產線的投資，在成本優勢上將是其他兩者無法比擬的地方。

　關於平面發射顯示器（Surface-Conduction Electron-Emitter Display；SED）技術，由於還在發展階段，它的發光原理較類似場發射顯示器（FED），目前投入廠商不多，主要是以Canon及東芝共同開發的 36吋SED 為最佳，FED過去在美國有許多廠商投入，不但後來都失敗了，Canon和東芝若能在2～3年內把SED做起來，應可佔有部分市場，否則可能沒機會了。

　但是任何一門顯示技術，越多廠商、越多研究機構投入，未來成功的機率越高，若一定要我選擇的話，OLED應是繼TFT LCD後最有希望接棒的顯示技術，未來10年內不僅只有在中小尺寸看得到OLED，在大尺寸應該也沒問題，可撓式顯示技術（Flexible display）也會有OLED的影子。其實各種顯示技術都將在市場上找到最適當的定位，短期內還不至於會消失，只會消長而已。（國科會光電小組執行秘書石大成口述，邵琮淳整理）

This Time, AMD May Have Staying Power

BusinessWeek Online

While skeptics say "prove it," the chipmaker could make its gains on giant rival Intel stick in 2005 -- and maybe even build on them....

See Original Article

科技挑戰2005

檯面上，科技產業熱鬧迎接聖誕旺季，實際上，卻望穿秋水不見明年的春燕。這個年關，對許多科技業者來說，可能很難熬了。明年科技市場的春燕到底來不來？還有哪些產業值得期待？

作者：高聖凱
遠見雜誌 2004.12 ／第222期



面對2005，科技產業無不提早戒備，準備迎接景氣寒冬的挑戰。

今年初台積電董事長張忠謀喊出2005年半導體景氣走下坡時，科技業者無不戒慎恐懼。11月初他再度重申，明年半導體景氣成長近乎停滯，更形同為明年景氣悲觀定調。無獨有偶，聯電董事長曹興誠也在公司運動會上清楚指出，明年上半年將是景氣寒冬，「準備進入景氣低迷的隧道，」他說。

保守的論調在國外同樣獲得呼應。明年將接任執行長一職的英特爾營運長歐特里尼（Paul Otellini），日前在內部網路會報上指出，未來十二到十八個月內，英特爾策略發展將從主攻改為防守，最快也得到後年才會大舉進軍市場。

半導體業觸角廣泛，囊括電腦、通訊與消費電子領域，一直是觀瞻科技產業前景的重要指標。國內外半導體大老一致保守看待景氣，讓台灣科技廠商不敢期望明年科技市場能有所突破。

今年市場表現對業者而言，如同洗三溫暖般刺激。上半年科技產業業績一片大好，一掃前幾年的陰霾，各類產品銷售數字也攀升，廠商們無不重拾景氣回春的信心。

但快樂時光短暫，下半年景氣態勢丕變，全球科技業發生諸多事件添變數，市場轉趨保守。而下半年的表現，左右了明年的市場動力，於是明年景氣也再度亮起警訊。「下半年景氣開始變得很詭異，」新上任的飛利浦台灣區總裁莊鈞源表示。

首先電腦產品青黃不接，成長力道受阻。電腦核心晶片龍頭英特爾晶片產品延緩推出，原訂今年9月推出的新一代筆記型電腦晶片平台 Sonoma，因技術問題拖延至明年，造成全球筆記型電腦產品進度落後，原本期待帶動下半年市場的銷售潮落空，讓許多國內筆記型電腦業者叫苦連天。電腦晶片組商矽統總經理陳文熙指出，下半年因為市場反轉，明年不敢過於樂觀。

根據拓墣研究報告指出，明年筆記型產業因為換機潮與無線網路服務率攀升，全球出貨將維持20％成長率，但全球桌上型電腦市場因市場飽和與庫存問題，成長率則不到一成。

除了電腦市場受阻，通訊與消費電子產品下半年也出現庫存問題，將持續蔓延至明年，讓業者飽受壓力。拓墣產業研究所資通訊研究中心經理徐玉學指出，今年8、9月的手機銷售不如預期，第四季通路業者又再度投下大量訂單，他預期庫存將延至明年第一季才能消化完畢。這些因素都讓明年通訊市場充滿變數。

而被視為國內「兩兆雙星」其中重點的液晶面板產業今年雖然業績亮麗，但明年則受到外強威脅，前景烏雲密布。

據國際產業研究單位Display Search統計，今年面板廠商大多仍倚賴換電腦螢幕潮求生，出貨成長率高達兩倍以上，但其中利潤已嚴重壓縮，業者獲利有限。日前全球第二大面板供應商 LG. Philips更公開宣示，明年不排除採取價格戰來壓縮台灣業者空間，據國內業者指出，這對國內面板產業將是重大挑戰，「他們絕對有條件跟台灣玩砍價遊戲。」

但明年科技產業仍有好消息，其中液晶電視、手機與遊戲機產業備受關注，明年可能仍是消費電子與通訊業當道的一年。

而其中的重頭戲，莫過於今年底開打的掌上遊戲機大戰。

消費電子大廠索尼與任天堂，不約而同在今年12月推出新一代掌上型電玩器，雙方已經準備展開廝殺。扮演數位個人娛樂核心平台的掌上遊戲機，被視為測試明年科技市場的前哨站。

索尼與任天堂均看好攜帶型數位娛樂的前景，其中索尼更是首戰掌上電玩遊樂器。據業者指出，索尼產品中內建無線網路與高效率運算晶片，其功能「已與一台電腦無異。」而過去以Game Boy站穩掌上電玩市場的任天堂，也將推出雙螢幕掌上遊樂器應戰，電玩雙雄的交鋒對決，將帶動一波遊戲市場活絡。

此外，通訊業期盼已久的3G新戰場，明年將全面開打，預料帶動另一波手機銷售成長。據拓墣統計，未來三年的全球3G手機市場複合成長率可望達36％，而拓墣通訊研究經理徐玉學更樂觀地認為，明年3G手機突破10％市占率將是輕而易舉。

業者均以「度小年」的態度看待明年景氣，但相信經過明年蟄伏，後年將會再度風起雲湧。曹興誠以「過隧道」來比喻，隧道裡的黑暗總是一時，走過了便海闊天空。

Smart Transport Systems Catch on in Japan

Smart Transport Systems Catch on in Japan

2 hours, 36 minutes ago

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer

TOKYO - Japan has some of the most congested, confusing and cramped streets in the world. It also boasts some of the latest technology in zapping computerized data to millions of cars, delivering what may be the world's smartest way to drive.

Photo
AP Photo


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Car navigation systems in Japan can quickly tell drivers which roads have traffic jams. Using a computerized FM radio broadcast system that collects and sends information from more than 28,000 infrared and radio-wave beacons installed along roads, they can also calculate how many seconds it would take to drive through virtually every block of the nation's cities and then find the fastest routes.

Yet only about a million vehicles — of the 70 million on Japanese roads today — take advantage of it.

That's because the most commonly sold navigation systems in Japan give drivers a fraction of the traffic information available.

Equipment offered at dealers is low-grade, and top-of-the-line navigation systems aren't advertised much in Japan.

The better models are also expensive: Equipment costs $950 to $1,900, and the ability to get more timely information adds another $240.

"I'm waiting for our company to put one in," said Tokyo cab driver Keizo Iida, who has no navigation machine.

Another hurdle: Japan Highway Public Corp., the nonprofit organization that oversees the nation's highways and transportation systems, has long been criticized as corrupt and wasteful. The current administration is trying to privatize it to make its operations more transparent and efficient.

Japan isn't the only country where the adoption of smart transportation is taking the slow road.

Electronic toll booths, roads embedded with computer chips and "intelligent" cars don't involve much cutting-edge technology, but knitting the systems together is complicated. Huge obstacles remain before governments, companies and the public can agree on standards, methods and costs to make smart travel a reality.

"To have the whole system, everybody has to agree on how to do it, what kind of technology you're going to use, what kind of standards you're going to use, and who's going to pay for it," said Gabriel Sanchez, a director at Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group of state and federal governments and researchers. "And that's extremely complicated."

Without coordinated efforts, smart transportation systems are making baby steps.

In Singapore, the government pushes drivers to use digital road-toll payments. In the United States, discounts on some tolls are offered for drivers paying electronically. Japan also offers such discounts on some highways and bridges.

Sanchez, who visited Japan recently for a conference on transportation, said Japan already leads in telematics, the technology that links cars with computers and telecommunications. That's because both the government and automakers, such as Toyota Motor Corp. (news - web sites), are pushing it.

The next generation of telematics can link cars to one another.

In tests by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, a Japanese research group, cars connect to other cars wirelessly to get information about a traffic accident or an approaching ambulance.

A picture of an ambulance or a crashed car pops up on the screen when signals are received from other vehicles, and the information is relayed from car to car.

In crowded Japan, even pedestrians could eventually use telematics.

Among the recent research projects are combined glasses and earphones for the blind that pick up infrared signals saying "red, red, red" or "green, green, green" as they approach an intersection.

Googlezon: The future of media

Googlezon: The future of media
--Martin LaMonica

Convinced that today's media industry is in for dramatic turmoil? Here's some futuristic thinking worth a look, even for jaded media watchers.

The scenario: Within ten years from today Google and Amazon merge, forcing the beacon of mainstream media to go offline and sue the Googlezon colossus in the United States Supreme Court for violation of copyright law.

In an eight-minute flash presentation (http://www.broom.org/epic/), the Museum of Media History presents its picture for how the Fourth Estate will be toppled by participatory journalism, aided by the titans of the Internet industry.

Seminal moments leading to the destruction of the media industry include the creation of the Web, the founding of Amazon and Google, blogging, TiVo and social networking services, such as Friendster.

But it's the year 2004, according to the clip, that sets the stage for dramatic changes in how people consume--and make--their news and information. Sony and Philips announce the first mass-produced electronic paper; Microsoft unveils a social news filter Newsbot; and Amazon unveils its own search engine.

Then the video clip's makers get really creative. Awash in cash from going public, Google acquires TiVo in 2005. The following year sees the emergence of the Google Grid, which allows consumers to access an unlimited amount of storage and bandwidth to share media.

Google and Amazon merge in 2008 and trump Microsoft's competitive efforts with an algorithm that allows computers to construct news stories dynamically tailored to each individual user.

The symbolic demise of the Fourth Estate occurs in 2011 when the New York Times Company loses its suit against Googlezon.

In 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct, which collects and filters media of all types to consumers. Some people are actually employed, too, paid according to the popularity of their work.

電信業千億營收將蒸發

前中華電信董事長毛治國大預言　電信業千億營收將蒸發 寄給朋友 友善列印
2頁之1
【文／黃創夏】
「領導者必須有策略性思惟，否則祇會投入一大堆資源到注定要被淘汰的東西裡。」

退休後，前中華電信董事長毛治國回到校園任教。他認為，別說大象，「恐龍也可以跳芭蕾」。曾經負責推動台灣電信自由化政策，並實際投入中華電信營運的毛治國，退休一年多以來走訪了美、日與歐洲的電信產業，也和發明電話的美國貝爾實驗室等專家多次交換意見，毛治國發現，各國都在積極因應即將來臨的「電訊風暴」，但台灣卻似乎尚未有完善的準備。

「快的話，三到五年全球大風暴即將來臨」，毛治國分析，這場風暴的本質是新科技即將成熟，產業界將會發生一場「海嘯式」的「破壞性創造」，屆時，電信業者賴以生存的語音通話、頻寬設備都將被一掃而空，以千億元計算的營收都將被「蒸發」。以下，是毛治國口述內容摘要：

我所謂的電信風暴，或者也可以說是電訊風暴，是指將來發生的改變不是零零碎碎的，而是結構性的，預期全球電信業者可能重新洗牌，現有的電信業者將要發生大規模的合併和重整，甚至資訊廠商、廣電產業都可能捲入這一波變局，快的話，我預計三到五年，這一個風暴就可能在全球發生。

結構性全球電訊風暴將發生

所謂結構性改變，全球目前電信產業的分類或結構方式都還是垂直區分，在電信法下的管理規則，包括固網、行動、加值服務管理規則等，市場與市場之間是垂直的分法，政府發放執照也是垂直的，固網有固網的IP網路，有自己的基礎設施、內容應用等；而行動也有自己的實體網路、虛擬網路、應用層、內容層，一層一層上去，數值也是自成一個體系，但科技的改變，將會造成結構性的改變。

其實，許多人已經看到這個浪頭了，就是如台北市推動全區無線上網的WiFi，但真正主浪頭，我誇張點形容是海嘯的話，就是Wi-Max，將帶來的結構性意涵是，電信無法歸類，是歸行動或固網？也就是說，在這裡進一步造成匯流。

歐、日以朝結構性整合發展

這個轉向在歐洲及日本已在發生，歐洲和日本電信法都朝這個方向修法，不再發固網或行動執照，而是發基礎建設執照，業者若要建固網就自己建，若是採用WiMAX而需要頻寬，就配給你，若是網路內要做廣播，廣播頻寬我也配給你；現在很多計程車後座可以看電視，就不是透過電信網路，而是透過廣播網路。

Internet有一個很高的理想，就是要做到任何時間、地點、人，未來還要再加上任何設備都可以被連接，現在行動歸行動，固網歸固網。但消費者希望的平台服務，各式各樣的管道都有，任何設備取得任何資訊，要語音就給語音，要看video畫面使用者不必傷腦筋，在Wi-Max的技術下，未來，頻寬已不是問題，就好像空氣、陽光和水一樣，隨手可得就變成不具經濟價值，電信系統業者的利基將會喪失。

這一天來得比大家想像中得快，歐洲和日本為回應這個情形，歐洲把電子化媒體、電子化的廣播系統，行動、電信等，取一個名稱：electronic communication，電子通訊產業，要做完整的服務，啪一聲，全部都要做。

狂潮的開端：行動電話出現

一九八○年代中期，ＡＴ＆Ｔ（美國電話電報公司）當時ＣＥＯ預測，行動電話全球需求祇有一百萬台，他當時沒有看出行動電話的潛力。但科技在後面推，造成「破壞性創造」，新技術一旦對了消費市場胃口，在消費市場證明其價值，爆開出來的市場，擋都擋不住。

行動電話出現後，電信業者面臨挑戰，網路突然變成無線，語音市場就被瓜分掉了，且比原來固網更厲害的是，固網是以住戶為單位，公司行號、部門為單位，行動以個人為單位，市場切得更深，以社會每個組成分子為單位，使得在已飽合的傳統電話之外，再創新的市場，這是電信通訊系統的第一個衝擊。

What’s Next for Google

What’s Next for Google
By Charles H. Ferguson January 2005
Page 1 of 9 next

from www.technologyreview.com

For Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, 2004 was a very good year. His firm led the search industry, the fastest-growing major sector in technology; it went public, raising $1.67 billion; its stock price soared; and its revenues more than doubled, to $3 billion. But as the search market ripens into something worthy of Microsoft’s attention, those familiar with the software business have been wondering whether Google, apparently triumphant, is in fact headed off the cliff.

I’ve seen it happen before. In September 1995, I had breakfast with Jim Barksdale, then CEO of Netscape Communications, at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto, CA, a restaurant popular with Silicon Valley dealmakers. Netscape had gone public a few months earlier, and Netscape Navigator dominated the browser market. Vermeer Technologies, the company that Randy Forgaard and I had founded 18 months earlier, had just announced the release of FrontPage, a Windows application that let people develop their own websites. Netscape and Microsoft were both preparing to develop competing products. Our choice was to stay independent and die or sell the company to one of them.

At breakfast, and repeatedly over the following months, I tried to persuade Barksdale to take Microsoft seriously. I argued that if it was to survive, Netscape needed to imitate Microsoft’s strategy: the creation and control of proprietary industry standards. Serenely, Barksdale explained that Netscape actually invited Microsoft to imitate its products, because they would never catch up. The Internet, he said, rewarded openness and nonproprietary standards. When I heard that, I realized that despite my reservations about the monopolist in Redmond, WA, I had little choice. Four months later, I sold my company to Microsoft for $130 million in Microsoft stock*. Four years later, Netscape was effectively dead, while Microsoft’s stock had quadrupled.

Google now faces choices as fundamental as those Netscape faced in 1995. Google, whose headquarters in Mountain View, CA—familiarly called the Googleplex—is only five kilometers from Netscape’s former home, needn’t perish as Netscape did, but it could. Despite everything Google has—the swelling revenues, the cash from its initial public offering, the 300 million users, the brand recognition, the superbly elegant engineering—its position is in fact quite fragile. Google’s site is still the best Web search service, and Gmail, its new Web-based e-mail service, Google Desktop, its desktop search tool, and Google Deskbar, its toolbar, are very cool. But that’s all they are. As yet, nothing prevents the world from switching (painlessly, instantly) to Microsoft search services and software, particularly if they are integrated with the Microsoft products that people already use.

In November 2004, Microsoft launched a beta, or test, version of a search engine designed to answer questions posed in everyday language and to serve results customized to users’ geographical locations. Microsoft has also created additional search software for its Internet Explorer browser and its Office productivity applications. That Microsoft is developing its own Web search engine and desktop search tools is significant in itself. But its competition with Google will have repercussions far beyond the existing search business—or even the software industry itself. Google and Microsoft will be fighting to control the organization, search, and retrieval of all digital information, on all types of digital devices. Collectively, these markets are much larger than the existing market for search services. Over the next several decades, in the view of search industry insiders I’ve spoken with, they could generate perhaps half a trillion dollars in cumulative revenue.

Microsoft is starting late but has extraordinary resources and powers of persistence—and it joined the browser wars late, too. In contrast, Google is youthful, adventurous, and innovative, and it does some things extremely well. The contest could end in a Cold War standoff, a decisive victory for either side, or even mutual destruction, if the competition frightens away customers and investors.

Peaceful coexistence, however, seems unlikely.

The Prize and the Contestants
Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Bill Gates will be competing against each other for the third time. For both men, the contest is personal as well as financial.

Gates’s philanthropic ambitions depend on Microsoft’s continued health. And like a rock star who yearns to be admired for his brains, Gates wants to create new technology. Only by doing so can he overcome his reputation as the college dropout who built his empire by turning other people’s ideas into mediocre products. “Bill Gates is desperate to prove that he can innovate,” commented a Microsoft executive who prefers to remain anonymous. “And it just might kill us.” He pointed to the ambitious goals and long delays that have plagued Longhorn, Microsoft’s future (and search-centric) version of Windows.

By contrast, the three men who run Google have impeccable technology credentials. Schmidt has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, did research at Xerox PARC, and became chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems, where he oversaw the development of many impressive technologies. In business, however, Schmidt has twice been beaten by Gates. The first time was at Sun; the second was at Novell, where Schmidt was CEO. Both firms made enormous mistakes. Schmidt wasn’t entirely responsible, however, because his hands were tied by his superiors at Sun and by his predecessors at Novell. At Google, Schmidt must once again share power—with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s brilliant but young and possibly overconfident founders, both “on leave” from Stanford University’s PhD program in computer science. Page and Brin still call many of the shots, and the company’s unusual capital structure gives them about 30 percent of the voting shares.


Google seeks to become the gatekeeper for not only the public Web but also the “dark” or hidden Web of private databases, dynamically generated pages, controlled-access sites, and Web servers within organizations (estimated to be tens or even hundreds of times larger than the public Web); the data on personal computer hard drives; and the data on consumer devices ranging from PDAs to cell phones to iPods to digital cameras to TiVo players. Google’s founders understand the scale of the opportunity. Larry Page recently said, “Only a fraction of the world’s information is indexed on our computers. We are continually working on new ways to index more.... Thirty percent [of our engineers] are devoted to emerging businesses.” And Sergey Brin once told Technology Review’s editor in chief, “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”

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Until now, competition in the search industry has been limited to the Web and has been conducted algorithm by algorithm, feature by feature, and site by site. This competition has resulted in a Google and Yahoo duopoly. If nothing were to change, the growth of Microsoft’s search business would only create a broader oligopoly, similar, perhaps, to those in other media markets. But the search industry will soon serve more than just a Web-based consumer market. It will also include an industrial market for enterprise software products and services, a mass market for personal productivity and communications software, and software and services for a sea of new consumer devices. Search tools will comb through not only Microsoft Office and PDF documents, but also e-mail, instant messages, music, and images; with the spread of voice recognition, Internet telephony, and broadband, it will also be possible to index and search telephone conversations, voice mail, and video files.

All these new search products and services will have to work with each other and with many other systems. This, in turn, will require standards.

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The emergence of search standards would encourage tremendous growth and provide many benefits to users. But standardization would also introduce a new and destabilizing force into the industry. Instead of competing through incremental improvements in the quality and range of their search services, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo will be forced into a winner-take-all competition for control of industry standards. Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist at the firm of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, CA, says, “This is something of a holy war for Microsoft*, and one they can’t bear to lose.”

In short, the search industry is ready for an architecture war.

Pursuing Lock-In
Architecture wars (also known as standards wars) occur because information technology markets require standards in order to manage complexity, communication, and technological change. Historically, proprietary control over a major information technology standard has created more wealth than nearly any other human activity. Architectural domi­nance mints money; and managed properly, it lasts forever. IBM’s mainframe architecture was introduced in 1964; Intel developed its first microprocessor in 1971; Microsoft’s first operating system was introduced in 1981; Cisco Systems marketed its first router in 1986. None shows any signs of disappearing, and each has already generated hundreds of billions of dollars in cumulative revenues.

It is only standardization that makes it possible for any browser to display any Web page, or for people to read the documents and e-mail messages they receive from each other. Standards are generally based upon the interfaces that constitute the authorized ways for software systems to communicate with each other. These include application programming interfaces, or APIs, like those Microsoft provides for developing Windows applications; communications protocols such as HTTP (the hypertext transfer protocol), which allows browsers to communicate with websites; and content or document structures, such as the HTML (hyper­text markup language) standard for Web pages, or the document structure used by Microsoft Word. These standards are embedded in larger architectures used in the design of general-purpose commercial systems, or platforms, such as the Windows operating system. Platforms, in turn, are used as the starting point for specific applications, such as word processors or accounting systems.

Sometimes standardization is achieved through nonproprietary efforts managed by governments, standards bodies, or industry coalitions. Examples include the basic Internet protocols, the HDTV broad­casting standard, and most telephone stan­dards. In other cases, like that of the Ethernet protocol invented by Bob Metcalfe while at Xerox PARC, a company donates an architecture to a standards body in the hope of creating or expanding a market. The open-source movement is an interesting variant of nonproprietary standardization based on decentralized control. In the case of open-source software like the Linux operating system, a community of creators and users in effect votes continuously on the direction of a standard.

But in most information technology markets, standardization is achieved via market competition. These contests are extremely complex, but they have a common underlying logic, which Charles Morris and I described a decade ago in our book Computer Wars. The best technology does not always win; superior strategy is often more important. Winners do tend, however, to share several important characteristics. They provide general-purpose, hardware-independent architectures, like Microsoft’s operating systems, rather than bundled hardware and software, like Apple’s and Sun’s systems. Winning architectures are proprietary and difficult to clone, but they are also externally “open”—that is, they provide publicly accessible interfaces upon which a wide variety of applications can be constructed by independent vendors and users. In this way, an architecture reaches all markets, and also creates “lock-in”—meaning that users become captive to it, unable to switch to rival systems without great pain and expense.

Architecture wars generally begin with a fierce competition for market share. Eventually, the market settles on a de facto standard, a dominant architecture under the proprietary control of one company. Subsequently, only a few rivals survive in the leader’s shadow, while the leader expands its empire into neighboring markets.

The search industry is the next place in which a vast architectural empire could be built. Some portions of the emerging search space are now occupied by Google, others by Microsoft, most by nobody. But in the end, there will probably be room for just one architecture. Google’s idyllic childhood must therefore give way to a contest much like those Microsoft has fought and won against companies ranging from IBM to Novell to Apple to Net­scape. But for several reasons, this architecture war may end differently. First, many of the companies defeated by Microsoft over the past 20 years suffered as much from self-inflicted wounds as from Microsoft’s predation. In Eric Schmidt, Google may have a CEO with the technological depth and painfully acquired experience essential to surviving Bill Gates. Second, Google’s principal services run on a platform that Microsoft doesn’t control—the Web. Third, in some cases (like its fight against Linux, for example), Microsoft’s software is now the high-cost incumbent.

Fourth, some analysts believe that Microsoft has lost its edge, that its size and age have bred complacency. Commenting on the collision between Google and Microsoft, Internet industry observer John Battelle recently wrote, “Microsoft is indeed a fearsome competitor, with extraordinary resources (and I don’t mean the $50 billion in cash; I mean the ability to leverage Windows). But it’s a middle-aged company that moves far more slowly than it did ten years ago, when it first recognized the Web threat.” (For John Battelle’s views on the future of publishing, see “Megaphone,” p. 36.)

Fifth, Microsoft hasn’t always won: Adobe and Intuit are doing just fine, MSN hasn’t killed AOL or Yahoo, and the Xbox hasn’t defeated the Japanese game industry (not yet, anyway). And finally, Microsoft’s recent entry in the search wars—the beta version of MSN’s search tool—is decidedly unimpressive. (Then again, Windows 1.0 was pretty bad, too.)

So Google’s defeat is not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, if it does everything right, it could become an enormously pow­erful and profitable company, representing the most serious challenge Microsoft has faced since the Apple Macintosh. But if Microsoft gets serious about search—and there is every reason to believe that it will—Google will need brilliant strategy and flawless execution simply to survive.

Does Google understand the gravity of the challenges that may confront it? Does it have a strategy for winning an architectural war? The evidence is equivocal.

Google has software developers skilled enough to construct a powerful architectural position. It has hired both newly minted PhDs and experienced technologists from Netscape and even Microsoft. One of its newer employees is Adam ­Bosworth, famous to software developers for developing the HTML engine in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and for his pioneering work on the Extensible Markup Language, or XML, the standard for machine-to-machine communication on the Web. Other recent hires, significant for their architectural expertise, include Rob Pike, a pioneer of the Unix operating system at Bell Labs; Joshua Bloch, a leading Java coder from Sun; and Cédric Beust, who developed the Weblogic platform at BEA Systems.

One Google manager, who preferred not to be named, said his company understands the need for proprietary control, and that future products would prove it. In late 2004, Google did release two im­portant new APIs, for its Deskbar search tool and its advertising systems. But the Google executive declined to com­ment on future plans, noting that his employer had become secretive to the point of paranoia. (Indeed, Google’s senior executives refused to be interviewed for this article.)

The executive then went on to say, “Look, everyone here—right up to our CEO and board of directors—has had the shit kicked out of them over the last five years. A lot of them were at Netscape, or at failed dot coms. Nobody I work with is complacent, and they’re all very smart.” But there are two important people who haven’t had the shit kicked out of them: Google’s founders. In a Playboy interview published shortly before Google’s IPO, Brin and Page did not mention competitive threats. Rather, they talked about corporate ethics, the creation of foundations, and their efforts to make Google a great place to work.

Google is a great place to work. My friends there absolutely love the place, and in part for that reason, they work very hard. Google allows pets and provides employees with laundry service, drinks, meals, massages, car washes, and (soon) child care. Its corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” But long ago, a professor of mine, noting my youthful idealism, remarked that the only successful neutral nations are those, like Switzerland, that are permanently armed to the teeth. And for Google, neutrality is not an option.

But what specifically should Google do? How is Microsoft likely to attack, what will the contest look like, and what will decide its outcome? Let’s begin with the current state of search.

The State of Search
For a long time, search engines were expensive luxuries for those who operated them. They never made money. Market leadership traded hands repeatedly. Sites like AltaVista rose to prominence and fell away. The entirely separate business of selling software products for text indexing and retrieval was a backwater. But then things changed. As the Internet and the Web grew, searchable digital content began to supplant conventional media, and efforts to improve the quality of search results intensified.

Early search engines ranked results largely according to crude criteria such as the number of times a page mentioned the user’s chosen keywords. But in a research collaboration that began in 1995, when they were still graduate students, Brin and Page applied a practice called citation ranking to the Web, and it turned out to be a much more reliable way to find relevant information.

For many years, reference publications like the Science Citation Index have ranked scientific papers’ “impact” by count­ing the number of times they were cited in other papers. Brin and Page’s insight was that if hyperlinks were viewed as citations, the same thing could be done for the Web. That insight led to the first truly superior search engine. Stanford applied for a patent on Brin and Page’s “PageRank” technique in 1998 (it was granted in 2001). Soon afterward, Brin and Page started Google and raised money from top-tier venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers.

Today, the search industry has two layers. The leaders, Google and Yahoo, both provide “retail” search services on their own websites. But both firms also license, on a highly selective basis, their infrastructure and services to other companies in a “wholesale” market. For example, Google provides the underlying search services for AOL and Amazon.com’s A9 search sub­sid­i­ary. Looksmart powered MSN Search for some years. Now, however, Microsoft is developing its own search engine.

Google holds nearly 40 percent of the U.S. retail search market, more than 50 percent of the U.S. wholesale market, and larger shares of the global market. Yahoo enjoys a rough parity with Google in the United States, and Baidu has been expanding in China. Interestingly, while Google operates its own service in China, it also holds an equity stake in Baidu.

Google derives nearly all of its revenues from advertising, of two distinct kinds. First, it places advertisements on pages of search results returned by its own site. Those advertisements are selected according to the words used in the search. Advertisers bid in highly complex auctions for the right to place ads on results pages for searches that use specific terms like “used cars,” “SUVs,” and so forth. Second, Google manages advertising for a wide network of external websites for which it provides ad placement services. It has combined its search engine with sophisticated text-matching and auction systems to target, price, sell, and evaluate its advertisements, both those placed on its own site and those on its affiliates’.

Some of these affiliates use Google’s search services, but most do not. In fact, almost half of Google’s revenue and profits come from its external advertising network, a business where its superior indexing and search capabilities play a less critical role. Google also sells a “search appliance,” a Linux server running its indexing and search software, to organizations wishing to provide search services for their internal Web servers. This business, however, is quite small.

Yahoo’s search business is similar. Like Google, Yahoo earns a substantial fraction of its total revenue through search-related advertising, both on its own site and on a network of affiliates. Yahoo’s portal offers a wider variety of information services than Google, including news, dating, chat, and shopping. But Google is rapidly diversifying: in addition to allowing users to download its free personal search tool, Google’s website has news, shopping, e-mail, and photo storage services in various stages of development.

Today, the wholesale search market has significant barriers to entry. Economies of scale have asserted themselves, secondary competitors have folded, and the creation of new search engines by startups is becoming prohibitively expensive. Consider: to crawl, index, and search more than eight billion pages—still only a fraction of the Web—Google now operates a global infrastructure of more than 250,000 Linux-based servers of its own design, according to one Google executive I spoke with, and it is becoming a major consumer of electrical power, computer hardware, and telecommunications bandwidth.

But the consolidation of the wholesale market does not mean that the search industry is mature. Quite the contrary.

First, there is no lack of new competition. This comes from any number of sources: large firms, like Amazon and its A9 subsidiary, with sufficient resources to enter the market; startups commercializing a wide variety of new search functions; information retrieval and filtering firms such as LexisNexis or Vivísimo, whose products are competitive with or complementary to Web-based search services; and, in a class by itself, Microsoft. Moreover, while basic Web crawling is a mature technology with high barriers to entry, many other search-related functions are not. Secondly, services that have thus far been confined almost exclusively to the public Web are now expanding to personal computers, the dark Web, and other platforms. Finally, the search arena is still unstructured and without standards. Search sites are self-contained islands. They do not interoperate, and independent developers cannot use search sites as platforms upon which to offer specialized products and services, because, with minor exceptions, the search industry lacks open APIs. For the most part, each service is confined to what it can do on its own.

But the search industry cannot resist APIs, standards, and open architectures much longer. No single company can offer users all the functions they want. Users will demand search products and services that work across many different platforms. And Microsoft will almost certainly exploit both its ownership of the Windows platform and its search engine. Indeed, Microsoft has already announced that it intends to provide third-party developers with APIs to its new search engine, enabling them to construct applications based on it.

Trends in Search: Technology
The advantage conferred on Google by its PageRank algorithm, once overwhelming, is gradually disappearing. Many other clever algorithms have been developed; indexing and searching are being applied to more data sources and data types; and ever more nuanced user interfaces and functions are being offered to users.

Some of these efforts seem quite promising. Amazon has scanned more than 100,000 books and made their text searchable for Amazon users. Google Print provides a similar service and also offers direct links to bookselling sites. PubSub, a small startup in New York City, has developed a high-performance “matching engine” that monitors online information: if you subscribe to a topic, PubSub will scan data in real time and notify you whenever there is news. For the sorting and clus­tering of search results, the leader is Vivísimo, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff in Pittsburgh, with its new Clusty website. Software from Blinkx, of San Francisco, lets users search multiple information sources, including their desktops, websites, and blogs. X1 Technologies of Pasadena, CA, also provides a popular desktop search tool.

As these examples suggest, many new search functions are being introduced by startups rather than by Google or established companies. A few of these startups may become large, independent firms. But most will remain small vendors, will be acquired, or will simply fail, depending on what Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft choose to do. Many offer products that would be natural additions or complements to existing search services, since their utility depends upon access to a search engine. But Google and Yahoo do not usually provide such access, even though it would benefit users. Google’s sole Web API is laughably limited, offering little functionality and contractually restricting users to 1,000 queries per day.

Just what services could be built upon a fully open Google architecture? They could take many forms, but some of the most obvious would make indexing and searching processes on the desktop, on Web servers, and on Google’s own website work together better. A single search could then span not just Google’s index of the public Web but whatever other sources might be appropriate: a newspaper archive, a medical database, an antique-car parts catalogue, or your own hard drive. Google, or others building upon its APIs, would unify the results, explain any access restrictions on particular sources, and facilitate purchases of information. At the same time, independent firms could create services that call on Google’s search and indexing functions to retrieve information, but present that information in new and creative ways.

As the search industry evolves, it also touches upon—and often competes with—a widening array of other industries, from publishing to software, in both business and consumer markets. The search industry wants to become the starting point for a larger proportion of digital activities. Some companies are happy to oblige:Ama­zon, for instance, opens its databases to search services, so that search results can point directly to relevant Amazon products, bypassing the need to navigate Amazon’s own site. Others are less welcoming. Microsoft will be displeased, to put it mildly, if Google Desktop begins to supplant the traditional Windows desktop interface and file systems.

However, the most important trend in the search industry is the proliferation of new computing platforms—and the increasing cross-pollination of data between these devices, PCs, and Web services. These emerging—and merging—markets represent Google and Microsoft’s greatest opportunity for future growth and the greatest threat they pose to each other. In the absence of a common architecture, the information on these systems is almost unsearchable. Today, a user cannot possibly conduct a search such as “Show me everything about the Chinese economy that has appeared in the last month in my e-mail attachments, Word documents, bookmarked websites, corporate portal, voice mail, or Bloomberg subscription.” Many computing platforms, old and new, have no useful search facilities at all. Most existing search tools are available on only one or at most a few platforms; and due to their lack of standardization, they cannot talk to each other.

Thus, while Google provides an ex­cellent service for searching the public Web and has made a good start on PCs with Google Desktop (the hard-drive search tool) and Google Deskbar (which performs searches without launching a browser), the search universe as a whole remains a mess, full of unexplored territories and mutually exclusive zones that a common architecture would unify. Given the size and growth rate of the markets involved, the dominant search provider a decade from now could easily have revenues of $20 or $30 billion per year.

Google Versus Microsoft
Who will win? Google certainly has impressive assets. Moreover, Microsoft does not own the server side of the Web and probably never will. Nor does it control the architectures of the newer computing platforms, whose markets are growing much faster than the PC’s. And in these newer markets, Microsoft faces a painful choice: either provide search technology that will run on, and thereby support, competing platforms such as Linux machines, or let others take the lead.

Yet Microsoft’s control of Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office is a real advantage. For instance, if desktop search tools enjoyed deeper access to the internal document structures of Word and Excel, they would be much more useful. Similarly, operating systems can potentially collect information about user behavior that could improve search tools substantially. Other recent search innovations are really enhancements to the Web browser. Google, Ask Jeeves, A9, Blinkx, Yahoo, and Microsoft are all providing search toolbars that can be downloaded into the browser, and independent developers have created many search-related enhancements to the open-source Firefox browser.

But we know who really owns the browser. Ramez Naam, group program manager for MSN Search, declined to say whether or not search functions would be integrated directly into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. But a Microsoft executive, who asked to remain unnamed, told me that his company had recently reconstituted its browser development organization. “Microsoft effectively disbanded the Internet Explorer group after killing Netscape,” he said. “But recently, they realized that Firefox was starting to gain share and that browser enhancements would be useful in the search market.” He agreed that if Microsoft got “hard-core” about search (as Bill Gates has promised), then, yes, Google would be in for a very rough time.

Why? Because in contrast to Microsoft, Google doesn’t yet control standards for any of the platforms on which this contest will be waged—not even for its own website. Although Google has released noncommercial APIs—which programmers may use for their own purposes, but not in commercial products—until recently, it avoided the creation of commercial APIs. In late 2004, however, Google announced APIs for its advertising systems and for the Google Deskbar. The advertising APIs could help create an infrastructure of firms dependent on Google’s platform and specializing in the management of automated, Web-based advertising strategies. This could protect Google’s advertising revenues against future price competition from Microsoft. The Google Deskbar APIs, likewise, should encourage third parties to create search functions for the Windows desktop.

These steps, however, are at best half-measures. Google has not yet faced the need for full architectural competition and in some respects has arguably been moving in the wrong direction. It still has not provided open APIs for its core search engine. (Raúl Valdés-Pérez, Vivísimo’s CEO, says that he tried to license Google’s search engine services but was refused.) Furthermore, it sells its search software to enterprises only in the form of a bundled, Linux-based hardware system. This alienates other hardware and software vendors, leaves most of the non-Linux market unserved, and presents a huge opportunity for Microsoft.

Google may feel that APIs are of secondary importance in its coming war with Microsoft. Two Google employees (both of whom prefer not to be named) told me that Google’s leaders believe that the company’s expertise in infrastructure—knowing how to build and operate those 250,000 servers—constitutes a competitive advantage more important than APIs or standards. This could be a major, even fatal, error. Microsoft can certainly obtain or cultivate the skills necessary to operate large-scale computing infrastructures; indeed, it already operates MSN, with nearly 10 million users.

Worse, Google may feel that APIs can wait. Peter Norvig, the company’s director of search quality, told Technology Review, “We’ve had the API project for a few years now. Historically, it’s not been that important: it’s had one person, sometimes none. But we do think that this will be one important way to create additional search functions. Our mission is to make information available, and to that end we will create a search ecology. We know we need to provide a way for third parties to work with us. You’ll see us release APIs as they are needed.”

Those words do not convey much sense of urgency. There is, however, another possibility: Google understands that an architecture war is coming, but it wants to delay the battle. One Google executive told me that the company is well aware of the possibility of an all-out platform war with Microsoft. According to this executive, Google would like to avoid such a conflict for as long as possible and is therefore hesitant to provide APIs that would open up its core search engine services, which might be interpreted as an opening salvo. The release of APIs for the Google Deskbar may awaken Microsoft’s retaliatory instincts nonetheless. For Google to challenge Microsoft on the desktop before establishing a secure position on the Web or on enterprise servers could be unwise.

Strategies and Prescriptions
In all of Microsoft’s successful battles, it has used the same strategies. It undercuts its competitors in pricing, unifies previously separate markets, provides open but proprietary APIs, and bundles new functions into platforms it already dominates. Once it has acquired control over an industry standard, it invades neighboring markets.

In contrast, the losers in these contests have usually made one or more common mistakes. They fail to deliver architectures that cover the entire market, to provide products that work on multiple platforms from multiple companies, to release well-engineered products, or to create barriers against cloning. For example, IBM failed to retain proprietary control over its PC architecture and then, in belatedly attempting to recover it, fatally broke with established industry standards. Apple and Sun restricted their operating systems to their own hardware, alienating other hard­ware vendors. Netscape declined to create proprietary APIs because it thought Microsoft would never catch up. Google—and Yahoo—would do well to take note.

What will Microsoft do? Publicly, it doesn’t care about building a broad search architecture reaching across many platforms. “There will be a lot of innovation and competition around search by a broad number of vendors, but it is wishful thinking to believe it is a platform tidal wave like the initial emergence of the browser and the Web,” says Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy. And indeed, Microsoft has begun innocently enough: a decent though unspectacular search site, some software, no bundling—nothing, you know, violent. But the company will provide APIs to its Web search engine, and its long-term strategy could be brutal. If it acts logically, it will bundle better search facilities into Internet Explorer and Office; it will build advanced indexing and searching tools into both its PC and server operating systems; and it will alter its own products to make searches of many kinds more fruitful. Search tools could tailor results to a user’s interests, based upon data collected by the operating system. Microsoft could even deliberately cause failures in Google’s products—for example, altering its file formats so that Google’s crawlers could not properly index Word or Excel files. Microsoft has been accused of such conduct repeatedly in the past, notably in its battles against the DR-DOS operating system (an attempted clone of MS-DOS) and Lotus spreadsheet software.

If it acts logically, Microsoft would also perform a “cashectomy” on Google—just as it did in the browser wars when it gave away Internet Explorer. Even with nearly $2 billion in cash, Google is vulnerable to this tactic. For instance, Microsoft could offer free wholesale access to its search engine. Then it could attack Google’s ­advertising networks by offering free or subsidized advertising placement. These businesses are based primarily upon agreements with third-party websites, most of which have no long-term allegiance to Google. (Google’s forthcoming advertising APIs could, however, change this.) Finally, Microsoft will try to play competitors off against each other, as is its custom. Microsoft thrives when its opponents are fragmented and possess no alternative common standard.

So what should Google do? Given Microsoft’s ferocity in the past, panic might be a productive first step. Google should understand that it faces an architecture war and act accordingly. Its most urgent task must be to turn its website into a major platform, as some other firms have already done. Amazon, as we have noted, does not merely operate a retail website. It has developed proprietary but open APIs that have made it the capital of an electronic economy (see “Amazon: Giving Away the Store,” p. 28). Other merchants set up stores under the Amazon umbrella, and other websites can offer direct links to Amazon’s product pages. Recently, Amazon has gone even further, creating ways for consumers to search and find products without visiting Amazon at all.

Thus, Google should first create APIs for Web search services and make sure they become the industry standard. It should do everything it can to achieve that end—including, if necessary, merging with Yahoo. Second, it should spread those standards and APIs, through some combination of technology licensing, alliances, and software products, over all of the major server software platforms, in order to cover the dark Web and the enterprise market. Third, Google should develop services, software, and standards for search functions on platforms that Microsoft does not control, such as the new consumer devices. Fourth, it must use PC software like Google Desktop to its advantage: the program should be a beachhead on the desktop, integrated with Google’s broader architecture, APIs, and services. And finally, Google shouldn’t compete with Microsoft in browsers, except for developing toolbars based upon public APIs. Remember Netscape.

When Google’s Peter Norvig was read this list—presented not as recommendations, but as things that Google would do—he did not deny any of it. When Technology Review asked, “If we reported any of this, would we be wrong?”, Norvig answered, “We don’t like the word ‘beachhead.’ That implies a war, and we don’t want to go there.” Pressed, he said, “Factually, nothing wrong”—although he stressed that APIs were only one way Google might create a “search ecology.” But historically, proprietary APIs have been the only way to create a loyal customer base—one that can’t readily switch to a competitor.

Big Questions
Would such an architectural strategy work? I’m not sure, but I think so. I also suspect that if Google doesn’t do something like this fast, and Microsoft attacks, Google will go down. Its decline would take longer than Netscape’s precipitous descent, but it would be no less final. And at least during the second term of the George W. Bush administration, it is highly unlikely that antitrust policy would come to the rescue.

Whether Google or Microsoft wins, the implications of a single firm’s controlling an enormous, unified search industry are troubling. First, this firm would have access to an unparalleled quantity of personal information, which could represent a major erosion of privacy. Already, one can learn a surprising amount about ­people simply by “googling” them. A decade from now, search providers and users (not to mention those armed with subpoenas) will be able to gather far more personal information than even financial institutions and intelligence agencies can collect today. Second, the emergence of a dominant firm in the search market would aggravate the ongoing concentration of media ownership in a global oligopoly of firms such as Time Warner, Ber­telsmann, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

If the firm dominating the search industry turned out to be Microsoft, the implications might be more disturbing still. The company that supplies a substantial fraction of the world’s software would then become the same company that sorts and filters most of the world’s news and information, including the news about software, antitrust policy, and intellectual property. Moreover, Microsoft could reach a stage at which its grip on the market remains strong, but its productivity falls prey to complacency and internal politics. Dominant firms sometimes do more damage through incompetence than through predation.

Indeed, as so many have noted, much of Microsoft’s software is just plain bad. In contrast, Google’s work is often beautiful. One of the best reasons to hope that Google survives is simply that quality improves more reliably when markets are competitive. If Google dominated the search industry, Microsoft would still be a disciplining presence; whereas if Microsoft dominated everything, there would be fewer checks upon its mediocrity.

Disclosure: As the result of selling Vermeer Technologies to Microsoft in 1996, Charles Ferguson still holds a substantial quantity of Microsoft stock, a position which is partially but not completely hedged. He has no other financial interest relevant to this article.

3G與WLAN是八竿子打不著的兩回事

兩者在行動上網的領域根本不會交鋒
文／黃彥達
http://www.digitalwall.com/



無線區域網路的運作方式，是一個基地台（AP，Access Point）加上可以接收訊號的網路卡。在基地台的訊號涵蓋範圍內，所有內含無線網路卡的裝置都可以連線上網。

無線區域網路（WLAN，Wireless LAN）的頻寬隨著標準的不斷改進而大幅提昇，製造成本也不斷往下掉。有許多公共場合早已開始提供WLAN無線上網的環境，例如國際機場的候機室，連鎖咖啡廳等等，使用上相當方便。

這樣的技術是從電腦相關產業發展起來的標準，而3G的技術則是從電信產業發展出來。由於都能提供寬頻無線上網的功能，因此竟引起了兩者究竟是互相競爭，互相取代，還是互補不足的疑問。

互補論者認為，無線區域網路的涵蓋範圍是區域性的，而3G則是涵蓋更大的範圍。所以當使用者在戶外的定點裡活動時（例如：咖啡廳）會需要WLAN，而在非固定環境中（例如：車上，馬路邊）等環境下，會需要3G。

這樣的論點似乎幫看起來處於競爭態勢的兩種技術，找到了和平相處的辦法。但其實就筆者的看法，兩者根本不是互相競爭的技術，也不是互補的技術，他們其實是八竿子打不著的兩種技術，拿在一起比較是有問題的。

大家把這兩種技術相提並論，是因為他們都提供在行動環境下寬頻上網的功能。但如筆者過去六期以來的文章所述，上網功能是3G手機上的非主流功能。因此如果把「上網」這個因素抽離，兩者就突然失去了比較基準。

別忘了3G手機始終是拿來講電話和看電話的，為什麼一定要跟WLAN 去比上網功能？為什麼要把上網的功能看得這麼重？

即便是兩者真的來比較行動上網功能，WLAN與3G也依然各自有一片天。3G行動上網的裝置，絕大部分會是手機，加上少部分的智慧型手機。這些裝置的共同特色，是很像手機，所以螢幕較小，行動上網時，使用者是連線到特殊設計的網站上去，以手機瀏覽。

因此當使用者在瀏覽的時候，是處在比較輕鬆的狀態下的。搭車時，無聊時拿起來打發時間，看一些軟性內容。這也是為什麼到目前為止娛樂性質的內容（例如鈴聲下載，遊戲等等），依然是手機行動上網中歷久不衰廣受歡迎的項目。手機並不適合拿來作工作用途。

而WLAN行動上網的使用裝置，會是電腦與具有上網能力的PDA 。這些裝置的共同特色，是螢幕較大，可以用標準的瀏覽器去看網際網路上的網站而不會失真。因此速度要更快以便呈現更大檔案的內容。

因此當使用者在使用這種方式上網的時候，大部分是正襟危坐的在電腦前，或者使用PDA 上網在進行工作事項，軟性內容較少成為焦點。「搜尋資料」這個項目始終佔據網路使用者行為排行榜的第一名，就是這個道理。

消費者很清楚他們在使用什麼裝置時，該用什麼方法來對待那個裝置，儘管他們可能不自覺。就以這個觀點來看，3G與WLAN依然不是互相競爭或者互補的技術。他們依然是兩種八竿子打不著的技術。

但，有沒有可能從WLAN發展出能打電話的技術？這下子總有可能互相競爭了吧？其實這樣的技術已經有了。但目前因為涵蓋範圍與漫游的限制，只能提供區域通訊，例如架設在辦公室當中成為行動分機。

此種架構在WLAN上面的網路電話，就是行動網路電話，雖然是通話的行為，但是卻是透過網際網路傳送，因此成本非常節省。讓所有的通訊都透過網際網路來傳送，這是目前全世界在努力的目標。

但如果從電信產業看過來，筆者只能說，遲早有一天手機也能打網路電話。而這才是重點，兩種類似技術要交鋒的地方，是語音通訊，而無關乎上不上網（使用者才不會管這通電話打出去是不是網路電話哩）。

只是行動網路電話的技術，看起來不論是3G還是WLAN，都還是相當遙遠的路。現在要論斷誰會勝出恐怕還是太早了些。

GPRS卯上WLAN 使用率不相上下

GPRS卯上WLAN 使用率不相上下

【記者龔小文／報導】

3G第三代行動電話與WLAN無線網路的主流之爭，2.5G 時代提前開打！根據資策會ACI-FIND調查，曾經使用行動與無線上網的民眾中，GPRS占36%、WLAN則占35%，兩者不相上下。最快明年第一季 尾，3G就將和各縣市政府積極佈建的WLAN正面交鋒，爭主流之餘，兩者互補造就的行動、無線雙網上網環境將更有看頭。

資策會調查，曾經 使用行動與無線上網的比例達11%，推估約有238萬人，與去年的4%相比有明顯的成長，雖然滿意度較去年也上升超過10%，但民眾使用GPRS時，最大 困擾是「傳輸速度慢」(37%)，其次是「連線品質不佳」 (19%)，使用WLAN最常遭遇的困難則是「連線品質不佳」(36%)，其次是「傳輸速度慢」(30%)。

有趣的是，民眾真正使用行 動、無線網路的時機和場合，都和業者預期的不盡相同。日本的手機行動上網發展經驗，最常用手機上網的地方就是通勤的電車，資策會的調查中，台灣手機族最常 用GPRS的地方卻是家裡、占46%，其次依序是公眾場所(34%)、工作地點(25%)，然後才是交通工具中或等待時、占22%。

業者 卯起來佈建WLAN無線上網據點，尤其以咖啡廳、連鎖店最多，但是資策會的調查卻顯示，辦公室、會議室才是民眾最常用無線網路的地方，占了38%，其次是 家中 (29%)，然後才是咖啡店(21%)及速食連鎖店(17%)，可見民眾真正攜帶筆記型電腦或PDA在外無線上網的比例並不高。

要 推廣行動、無線上網的普及率，實際應用恐怕是關鍵。資策會表示，沒有無線或行動上網經驗的民眾不曾使用的原因正是沒興趣、沒需要(43%)，沒有實質應用 讓民眾感受到必要性，其次才是沒設備(30%)的硬體普及問題，因為不會使用或花費太高而卻步的人，也分別占16%和13%。

【2004/12/23 民生報】

聯想收購IBM電腦業務 雙方的真正意圖何在？

Nikkei Business
2004/12/22

　　【日經BP社報道】 東芝被IBM當做抬高自身價碼的“托”！——12月8日中國聯想集團宣佈以總計17億5000萬美元的價格收購IBM個人電腦業務後，電腦業界向東芝投去了“同情的目光”。

東芝出價300億日元

　　“IBM曾主動和我們接觸過”--從一位東芝官員不經意間透露的這句話中，可以看出IBM至少曾在聯想與東芝兩公司間做過權衡。當然，同時與多家進行交涉的做法在當今並不少見。

　　由於東芝與聯想開出的價碼相去甚遠，所以本來就不在同一起跑線上。東芝的“Dynabook”與IBM的“ThinkPad”一樣，同屬全球知名的筆記本電腦品牌。不僅銷售網路已經遍佈全球，而且技術力量也口碑極佳。包括不參與價格戰的方針在內，東芝與聯想的基本路線如出一轍。

▲本照片由聯想集團特別提供


　　與IBM最明顯的區別僅僅在於，東芝剛剛採取了“通過最尖端的AV（影視）功能，向企業和個人用戶提供附加值的戰略”（專務執行董事西田 厚聰）。

　　對於東芝而言，即使收購IBM的PC業務，也只是業務規模的擴大，不會帶來優勢互補效應。同時還必須對雙方業務中重復的部分進行大規模的調整。而且，2003年秋IBM詢問收購意向時，正是東芝在美國市場上因美國惠普推進的價格戰而最艱難的時候。

　　至於當時談判提及的收購金額，東芝表示“無可奉告”（西田），但據接近IBM的消息人士稱，“約為200億～300億日元”。如果這一點屬實的話，即使加上IBM個人電腦業務背負的5億美元債務，總計也就是700億～800億日元，還不到聯想出價的一半。與能夠從收購IBM中獲得IBM的品牌價值、技術力量、中國以外的市場與客戶等“額外收穫”的聯想之間，東芝存在著巨大差距，這一點早在談判之前就已經非常清楚。

　　IBM早在2001年就曾向聯想提出過出售PC業務一事，但當時由於聯想正在優先考慮鞏固國內市場，所以未能成交。此次，聯想從一開始就被當作真正的人選，被當成“托”利用的東芝當然高興不起來。

背上沉重包袱的聯想



　　另一方面，聯想今後將會面臨巨大考驗。此次收購是否是一次超越自身實力的高風險決策，只要看一下聯想的現狀，即可一目了然。

　　2003年IBM個人電腦業務銷售額為95億6600萬美元，虧損2億5800萬美元。而聯想2003年度（2003年4月～2004年3 月）的銷售額為232億港元，約為IBM的1/3。純利潤為10億5000萬港元。假如進行單純的合算，收購的同時聯想將變成一家1億多美元的虧損企業。

　　在17億5000萬美元的收購額中，有6億5000萬美元將以現金方式支付，還有6億美元將以聯想股票的形式支付。另外，聯想還將從IBM手中接過5 億美元的債務。但是截止今年9月底，聯想持有的現金貨幣只有31億港元。現金不足的部分將通過從擔任此次收購談判財務顧問的美國高盛公司那裏接收5億美元的過渡性融資，以及銀行的長期貸款進行籌集。

　　另外，轉讓的6億美元股票中，普通股約為8億2000萬股，同時還要以每股2.675港元的價格增發沒有表決權的優先股約9億2000萬股（總計約17億4000萬股）轉讓給IBM。IBM由此將成為持股比例佔18.9%的聯想股東。從短期來看，對於流通股的股東而言，收購明顯屬於高風險因素。原因就在於將鉅額虧損的業務連同5億美元債務一併收購後，為了支付這筆費用，不僅要從銀行貸款，而且新股的大量發行還會使現有股東的權益縮水。

　　香港市場對此反應強烈。12月6日開始停盤的聯想股票9日重新開盤後，股價暴跌。9日～13日的3個交易日裏，其股價下跌了13%，由2.67港元跌至2.33港元。收購消息宣佈後，多家證券公司下調了對聯想的投資預期。

　　IBM與聯想強調指出，“這是一次相互出資的戰略合作，而非PC業務的出售和收購”。但是，從聯想內部的情況看，與其說是IBM積極投資，倒不如說是不得不通過貸款與發行新股來彌補資金不足更來的自然些。



　　聯想在雙方的合同中，加入了IBM原則上自收購完成之日起5年內不得出售聯想股票的條款。假如在此期間聯想業績下滑，股價下跌，那麼IBM的資產價值必然縮水。5年時間裏，除允許聯想使用“IBM”、“ThinkPad”和“ThinkCentre”商標及標誌外，IBM方面還將在銷售、金融、維護和客戶響應等方面提供全面支援。從聯想來說，通過將IBM拉入出資者的行列，獲得了IBM的全方位支援。

　　聯想之所以能夠艱難地完成據稱在電腦業界尚無成功先例的、“老鼠吞象的風險收購”，是因為有中國政府背後的支援。聯想雖是一家民營企業，但國家研究開發機構的中科院在聯想控股公司中佔有57%的出資比例。很明顯聯想自然會受到中國政府的特殊關照。

　　正因為如此，IBM認為能夠利用聯想的銷售網路及關係網在中國政府資訊系統採購中獲得大筆訂單。而且，通過高價出售虧損業務，將會改善自身的ROA（資產收益率）。“IBM利用小投入獲得了大回報”，日本大和綜研上海事務所首席代表肖敏捷在談到此次收購案時如此評價。

再現“IBM帝國”？

　　然而，假如目光被帶有“出資”附加條件的出售手段及其中國市場戰略吸引的話，就會誤解IBM的發展戰略。曾作為日本IBM金融業務本部營業人員而大顯身手的日本High Availability Systems公司社長高柳 肇向業界發出了警告。

　　“IBM已經明確宣佈，要甩掉不賺錢的個人電腦業務，集中精力發展服務業。將經營資源集中到高性能伺服器和服務業以後，很快就將採取新的戰略”。也就是說，志在長期掌權的塞繆爾-帕爾姆薩諾（Samuel Palmisano）董事長肯定已經描繪出一幅就像大型主機時代曾令競爭對手俯首稱臣的絕對領先的發展藍圖。高柳表示在“聽到聯想和IBM的消息後，渾身如同凍僵的感覺”。

　　IBM還未公開其真正的戰略。不過當它的戰略浮出水面時，包括一直在IBM後面緊追不捨的日本電腦廠商在內，恐怕又將落到IBM的後面。

平面電視5種技術展開爭霸

2004.12.22　 工商時報


邱輝龍/綜合外電報導

日本經濟新聞周二報導，平面電視機已進入全面直接的白熱化競爭型態，過去主要是液晶與電漿電視機間畫面尺寸的競爭，但隨著液晶面板的大型化，這樣的競爭已無意義。

隨著背投式電視與ＳＥＤ式電視也加入戰局，日本各電機廠商將以重點投資專精方式，以各自擅長的重點做為競爭利器。報導指出，隨著競爭益趨全面，未來業界的勢力版圖也將改寫。

報導指出，最近平面電視機市場的攻防，是由液晶主攻，電漿處於守勢。去年之前，兩者以三十七吋型為界，可說壁壘分明，亦即三十七吋以下為液晶領域，以上為電漿的勢力範圍。然而，隨著液晶的大型化，到了今年，分水嶺已前移至四十至四十五吋。

電漿廠商也不甘示弱，準備強化技術加以迎擊。松下電器產業及先鋒認為，若改善省電力性，利用動畫表示性能作為利器，將可與液晶電視分庭抗禮。

然而與此同時，背投式與ＳＥＤ電視也加入戰圈。精工愛普生今年將正式銷售大型背投式電視機。東芝與佳能將聯手開發ＳＥＤ面板，明年夏季發售此種電視機。東芝的目標計劃在二○一○年銷售三百萬台ＳＥＤ電視機。

尤有進者，二○○七年，精工愛普生預定推出「第五種平面電視機」，亦即有機ＥＬ（電子冷光）式電視機。

報導指出，可以預期未來平面電視戰場將是由這五種技術逐鹿中原，日本各電機廠商將以各自專精的技術加強重點投資，以增強競爭力，例如，普與先鋒事實上將分別專營液晶與電漿，新力則轉向液晶，松下則以電漿為主軸。

PDP 說不定是隻招財貓

2004.12.22　 工商時報


陳泳丞

平面顯示器的世界裡，TFT、PDP、OLED、SED各有各的好處，雖然TFT的投資者眾，也明顯佔去市場主流的聲勢與地位。但是在商言商，資本主義市場裡強調的是獲利，能賺錢的技術就是好東西，猶如「不管黑貓白貓，會抓老鼠就是好貓」此一論點一樣。

在TFT面板六、七代廠的聲勢助威之下，未來液晶電視的天空似乎無比亮麗，但是從C/P值的觀點來看，PDP卻不見得一定會是食之無味、棄之可惜的雞肋。

以目前在電視機品牌市場稱霸的日本電子業巨人新力（SONY）來說，眼尖的讀者可以發現，最近該公司的電視機廣告，除了有那一個非常可愛的新力機器人走來走去之外，整個廣告主打的議題，既不是液晶電視也不是電漿電視，而是新力獨有的影像處理技術「WEGA」。

對於消費者來說，如果不貼上標籤，其實一般人有時很難以區分TFT與PDP的不同，問題這就來了，以四十幾吋的超大型平面電視來說，二個同尺寸的TFT與PDP電視，多數人不容易看出其中的區別，但是以有品牌的機種來說，TFT甚至可能比PDP貴上個十萬元，從消費者採購行為來分析，PDP 的確是有其市場競爭利基。

再從製造端來看，近年來PDP的設備與製程也有相當長足的進步，以往一片玻璃基板僅能切割出一片PDP面板的情況，現在可以有切三面、未來可以切六片等等，可以說，PDP廠如果要進一步降低製造成本、提高效率，投資新廠將是必要的動作，也才是更具有市場競爭力的作法。

對於華映這家老字號的顯示器公司來說，手裡握有CRT、TFT、PDP等三大事業部門，雖然容易失之龐雜，但從反面來看，卻也是站在另一種戰略制高點上。漢高祖劉邦本身雖不具領兵的長才，但卻有「將將」(帶將)的本事，有韓信、張良與蕭何等三名各有所長的大將為其效命，得其所助才能成漢室霸業。因此如何看待廠商之間的競爭，僅存乎一心而已。

日消費電子產業 生氣蓬勃

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

日消費電子產業 生氣蓬勃

■ 編譯湯淑君、林郁芬／綜合東京十三日電

熬過十多年來的經濟低潮，日本消費電子產業如今恢復蓬勃朝氣。順應各式數位裝置旺盛的需求，廠商紛紛推出標榜創新設計的產品，讓先前備受打擊的日本科技業信心大振。

1960年代，電晶體收音機和電視機的需求推動日本經濟起飛。現在，刺激日本經濟復甦的動力，則是消費者對各種新奇數位裝置的渴望。

渴望新奇數位裝置

Sony公司社長安藤國威說：「在數位電子領域，日本是領導者。窄頻由美國稱冠，那以個人電腦平台為主。現在，那成為通訊與娛樂輸送管道，正是日本所長。」

產業景氣重振趨勢已顯現在財報上。以東芝公司為例，2004上半年淨利7,910萬美元（83.8億日圓），銷售額250億美元，扭轉去年同期虧損322億日圓的頹勢。

短期來說，日本企業指望年終銷售季提振營收。長期而言，成功關鍵在於找出致勝模式，憑先進的設計、新奇的技術和品牌的強勢，享受高人一等的價位，同時藉工作委外和零組件標準化等技巧削減成本。

顧能公司（Gartner）分析師貝克（Van Baker）說：「（松下電器產業的）Pana-sonic是一家真的掌握這股趨勢的公司。我對Sony則仍然存疑。」

提起日本消費電子產業的復興，經常被舉為證據的產品有三：數位相機、高畫質電視機以及數位影像光碟（DVD）播放機。這三大熱門產品分別取代軟片相機、類比式電視機和卡式錄影機，也是日本電子業數十年來大量生產的主力產品。

聯盟取代敵對關係

在設計新一代數位裝置時，日本製造商繼續改良把鋁、塑膠和卡通人物轉化為藝術品的本領。日本廠商強調產品設計的「情感」層面，這對電腦工業而言可說是另類概念，但日本主管對此津津樂道，認為那是任天堂遊戲機、凱蒂貓和行動電話大受歡迎的原因之一。

這種重大的商業哲學轉變，正好順應全球市場變革所需。別國的製造商，例如三星電子公司和蘋果電腦公司，都已懂得如何設計、進而銷售令人驚豔的消費電子裝置。

中 國大陸和台灣廠商提供代工製造服務，也讓一群新秀陸續跨入消費電子市場。沃爾瑪（Wal-Mart Stores）、施樂百（Sears, Roebuck & Co.）、西屋（Westinghouse）和百思買（Best Buy ）等公司，如今都銷售冠上自家商標名稱的消費電子產品。

為維持競爭力，日本廠商已採取工作委外、與外商聯盟等策略，如Sony和東芝就與 三星建立合資公司。這類新聯盟逐漸取代長久來的商場敵對關係，靠集結資源發展新技術並節省成本。目前為止，此策略似已見效：在液晶顯示器（LCD）和電漿 電視市場，前五名大多是日商，例如夏普和松下。（系列二之一）

2004/12/14 經濟日報

國際智財合作

2004.12.20　 中時晚報

國際智財合作

周延鵬

三星電子與新力公司繼合資經營第七代TFT-LCD後，最近宣布簽訂專利交互授權契約，雙方將各自提供九成以上的專利授權對方實施，授權技術領域將涵蓋資料壓縮、加密、DVD、DRAM、快閃記憶體等。這項合作已在國際引起相當的關注，對台灣產業的影響更不容忽視。

因為這項專利交互授權給三星與新力帶來縮短研發時間、節省研發成本、建立產業標準、擴大各自核心產品的全球經濟規模和市場佔有率、控制法律風險和訴訟費用等效益...使得這兩大巨人的競爭力更強大。

對於三星與新力簽訂專利交互授權契約，台灣政府與產業有六個必須正視的事項：1.分析三星與新力專利交互授權之專利技術種類及其對雙方核心產品結構和市場、營收結構之關係和影響；2.前述產品、市場和營收結構與台灣企業之競合關係及其可能的影響；3.檢視台灣公私部門智慧財產品質的良窳和管理經營行為的創新能力，以及面對現有智慧財產的部署措施的困境；4.跨國企業進行國際智慧財產交互授權，實質上將壓縮台灣科技「技術自主」及「市場自主」的空間，並將使台灣企業繼續支付永無止境的權利金；5.台灣產學參與和經營產業標準和聯盟的心態、格局及作業程序的問題；6.檢視智慧財產濫用有關的競爭法法制之周延性。

而台灣研發機構和企業則須速落實前瞻技術的研究發明，須速創新智慧財產的經營模式，須能大開大闔的合作；如此才有機會參與國際產業標準和聯盟，才有機會參與國際智慧財產的合縱連橫，最後也才有機會在全球經濟的競爭舞台上立足。（作者為智慧財產權研究專家）

CNN.com - U.S. lags behind much of developed world in wireless - Dec 20, 2004

U.S. lags behind much of developed world in wireless


NEW YORK (AP) -- On a trip on the Tokyo subway last year, almost everyone ignored the young man talking on one wireless phone, messaging with another and juggling a third.

Such cell phone overload would almost certainly get noticed in the United States, which lags the rest of the developed world in wireless use.

An estimated 57 percent of the U.S. population chats on wireless phones -- not much greater than the percentage of wireless phone users in much poorer Jamaica, where 54 percent of the people have mobile phones, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

By comparison, in Hong Kong there are 105.75 mobile subscribers for every 100 inhabitants. In Taiwan, there are 110.

Sprint Corp.'s $35 billion deal this week to buy Nextel Communications Inc. is likely to spark another round of price wars and handset giveaways in the United States, but it will take more than industry consolidation and aggressive marketing to increase use.

Why? The reasons range from credit checks to network quality to coverage areas.

Wireless networks elsewhere are simply better than those in the United States, said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research.

"For a long time, the U.S. had way too many networks being supported by not enough investment," he said. "The quality of U.S. networks is only now coming close to the quality you would see in major European and Asian markets."

Not that the European model was perfect: Companies there paid $125 billion for licenses to operate "third-generation" mobile networks that enable European users to zap videos and data by phone. The result: Mountains of debt, but a chance to sell phones packed with features James Bond would love.

That hasn't been the case in the United States.

Wireless companies were the No. 2 sector for complaints to Better Business Bureaus in 2003, trailing only car dealers. They were the second-lowest ranked industry in the University of Michigan's customer satisfaction index, second only to the hated cable companies.

One reason American consumers are miffed is what Forrester Research analyst Lisa Pierce calls "big holes in rural coverage." In the Tampa, Florida area where she lives, her wireless calls start breaking up one mile south of her home. Her husband uses a different carrier; his calls break up one mile north.

Another reason for lower cell phone use in the United States is how service is sold. The largest carriers sell phones by subscription, requiring a credit check and a commitment of at least one year.

"We have tapped out the prime-credit segment in the U.S.," said Roger Entner, a Yankee Group analyst. "Everyone who wants to have a wireless phone and can pass a credit check has one. Everyone who can pass a credit check and doesn't have one -- after ten years of a continuous barrage (of advertising), they're not going to cave."

If the industry wants more users, it will have to change its business model to embrace people with iffy credit who are willing to buy prepaid phones, he said.

Companies are hesitant to do that because it doesn't help them with Wall Street analysts, who score wireless companies' stock by the number of subscribers added to their networks, the average revenue per user and the rate customers drop their service, a figure known in the industry as "churn."

Prepaid customers won't help average revenue per user or churn, he said, so the largest mobile companies aren't interested, Entner said.

One way around that is joint ventures with companies such as Virgin Mobile USA Llc. Their customers have a higher churn rate and lower revenue per user, but they still pay, Entner said.

No one in the industry is likely to say this, but the fact is, many companies may not want more customers if those customers won't be big spenders. They would rather focus on getting existing customers to spend more money by signing up for extra services and sending text messages and photos.

At Verizon Wireless, wireless data services contributed $300 million, or 4.7 percent, to third quarter 2004 revenue, up from 2.3 percent in the same period a year ago. One third of the company's customers use data services, which add an average of $7 to their monthly bills.

That's one reason that while the number of Verizon Wireless customers increased 16.9 percent in the most recent quarter, revenue increased 23 percent.

What's true for Verizon Wireless holds for the rest of the industry.

The average monthly wireless phone bill bottomed out at $39.88 in 1988. Since then, it's been edging up, hitting $49.49 this year, thanks to increased data use.

That's why all the major carriers are adding wireless broadband to their existing networks, so customers can get used to sending more information faster -- and paying more for the privilege of subscribing to such premium services such as video news clips.

The next generation of wireless users may be machines, not people. Services such as OnStar, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp., use a combination of cell phones built into cars and Global Positioning Systems, to call for help in emergencies, Lin said. Cars that call 911 when air bags are deployed use the same technology.

Similar systems are being built for vending machines to call a central office to say they need to be refilled and to monitor oil and gas company equipment used in harsh climates and using wireless networks to transmit video ads to screens in malls.

"People who think we're at a point of saturation are not including all the possible uses of technology," Lin said.