Quick update on what we're seeing

So everyone now has:

1. A BYOD or security angle. Or some hook into any of the top 3 priorities of I/T customers in pull market conditions.

2. A mobile strategy (or you're a dinosaur, or just don't like customers or cash flow)

3. A need for more people than candidates to fill various roles (if you're smart enough to be taking advantage of a pull market in technology)

Let's look ahead. I think:

1. Facebook will do well, but level off around $150B in market value until someone democratizes your Facebook data. Then what do they do? They can buy their way into phase two. How many user abuses will be inflicted before this company "grows up" and how will it grapple with privacy rights vs their commercial interests on an ongoing basis? To me this is Facebook's fundamental dilemma.

2. Google's just not getting it. They don't get consumers at all. But Android will consolidate, 2-3 handset makers will dial it in, fragmentation woes will settle down and it'll make a run at iOS. But droid will not ever dominate tablets. MS will make a nice push here.

3. I/T (despite "overclouding", a word I made up recently), is where the real money will be in the next 5 years.

4. Cali will do ok and stabilize for the next year or two but the technology space's success is masking a very deep and insidious longer term threat to the state's well-being, which is a tax-the-rich, tax and spend political culture. Lookout Cali, in about 2014/2015 when this really inflicts pain and once again, Jerry Brown will have made a bunch of stupid mistakes like he did in the 70s, and leave someone else holding the bag. He should be ashamed of himself for caving into the CFT last month on the tax strategy for November, which will narrow the tax base even more, when Cali needs to widen it considerably, leaning too hard on the top 1%, which are mobile and which will eventually say "enough's enough." Letting public service unions dictate tax policy is a recipe for disaster as it's the fox guarding the henhouse effect and they already have way too much clout in this space. Cali's achilles heal are public service unions. Anyone with a pulse MUST see this and fight it. They're the ultimate anti-capitalist, pro-big gov't, etc.

5. 90% of solar startups will be gone by this time next year.

6. 90% of US battery startups will be gone by this time next year. Same with biofuels/biochem. Any capital intensive greentech company running short on technology/cost excellence, commodity shock proof (show me one?!) and needing capital should just be shut down now but people are too embarrassed to admit they blew it in this space and their denial of this harsh reality will cost their investors dearly. Time to cut and run from capital intensive green tech. It's so obvious it's sickening.

7. Digital is leveling off. Companies are starting to flatten out, management teams are flaky, you're seeing high turnover in startups and the bigger companies like Groupon continue to show why inexperienced management teams in hypergrowth public co's are a recipe for mediocrity if not outright failure. No one seems interested in mature leadership teams and this will be the undoing of many digital media related companies, unfortunately.

9. The next 5 IPO's in technology, Facebook excluded, possibly Twitter excluded, that are positive events for investors a year later, are likely going to be I/T related vs digital.

10. Ecommerce will go from $1trillion to many trillions over the next 5 years, at the expense of a lot of retail jobs in Europe and here. Will actually help Asia from a job creation point of view. I just don't know how strip malls survive this next era where you're buying shaving gear on the web.

11. Apple is truly unstoppable. Until MS, with tremendous irony, becomes the "underdog story." And makes a dent in tablets and mobility. Watch for them here. But with such a bumbling idiot in Steve Ballmer as CEO, they could blow this. And Windows 8 reviews suggest promise, but some real cluelessness on the PC level. If they nail tablet and handset, they're good. If they don't, Apple is a thousand dollar stock in two years and a trillion in market value, potentially acquiring Microsoft? Stranger things have happened.

Hope you enjoyed the stream of consciousness. We'll see what happens, of course.

Andy