Foreign Perspectives

The head of IBM in 1943 announced that he felt there was a world market for five computers.

It might sounds silly at first glance but in fact he wasn’t far off the mark if computers had remained the same. The crucial thing is that, of course, they didn’t remain the same as the 1943 version. Not only did they shrink drastically in size (the smallest pocket calculator you can buy is more powerful than the  1943 era supercomputers) but they also dropped even more dramatically in price with that 1943 computer power now available for under £1.

That drop in both size and price opened up vast new markets for computers of course. You’d never think of lugging around a removal lorry sized computer just to add numbers but when it’s pocket sized you do.

Of course, it wasn’t just the size and price that changed: the power available went up equally dramatically as did the functionality of the software available. In the early days it was largely payroll that computers were used to calculate and they still do that but, of course, they do a whole lot more. Many of those functions are things that wouldn’t even have been considered something that a computer could do then. You’re reading this courtesy of the Internet and yet nobody would have considered publishing pamphlets like this one via computer back in 1943.

And, that increase in functionality is still going on. The computer that I’ll type this on in 10 years time will be a considerably more powerful one, the standard connection speed will probably be much faster and rather than type this I might well be doing a video version in 10 years time.

Even over shorter periods change can be quite staggering and needs to be allowed for in your business plan unless you want to be left behind.