A world with unprecedented competition

I had this discussion with my brother-in-law recently. Our topic reaffirm my view that the world has become even more competitive than before. There is no more comfort zone for business. Every company is competing neck and neck with each other.

The PC price is dropping, phone price is dropping, TV price is dropping. Oil, land and food are different because they are limited resources. But most other businesses, manufacturing and services no longer enjoy such luxury. Another 10 years, Telco may no longer made money from fixed phone line. You are not number #1 or #2 business, you will be losing, especially so for high tech company like Google (search engine), Apple (iPad), Facebook (social network).

Where will HP and Microsoft heads to? See how Nokia and Cisco lose their glamour considering not so distant ago, they were still reigning the world. IBM had able to turnaround in the 90's because they change and change in the direction, so Elephant can dance, but only if it try.

To customers, it's not good news that they have less and less choice. They only have either less than a handful to choose, say, if they want to buy servers. To vendor, it's not good news, for anything priced above zero is too expensive. For the world, it's so much monotonous as everybody is only flocking to iPhone, or like me owning an Android.

The world no doubt had become a competitive one, and we no longer can go back to the days, when my father works hard, but he can come back from work before sunset, and every family members group together to have an early dinner.

Suddenly, i remember my Sales lady told me about the story that her neighbor left all his belonging and go for "a walk", and he doesn't know when he will be back.