Wal-Mart, which is aggressively pushing RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) on its suppliers, will be the gorilla that calls the tune in 2004 in the consumer packaged goods technology arena. "Wal-Mart will get what it wants with RFID," said Adrian. Outside of the Wal-Mart universe, however, RFID will find a rougher road. Widespread adoption of RFID by enterprises needs something it doesn't yet have: a solid return on investment.
And PC prices will continue to drop in 2004, good news for buyers, bad news for sellers. To make up the difference, the research firm's survey results noted that IT managers expect major PC makers -- such as Dell, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard -- to continue their efforts to make headway in the consumer electronics market.
That shift is definitely in vogue in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where major IT vendors, Dell and HP and Microsoft included, are touting new moves into consumer electronics.
This week, for instance, Microsoft announced a host of CE-technologies, including Windows Media Center Extender, which will integrate into devices such as set-top boxes and televisions to display content stored on PCs, while HP on Friday rolled out a slew of products it's targeting at the home. Among them: an entertainment hub and central storage repository for music, photo, video, and movie files that HP plans to launch this fall.
But the overarching prediction from Adrian really isn't so much a prediction -- the numbers aren't yet in -- but an observation.
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