科技产品新周期循环开始了？

上一轮的以英特尔的芯片为核心的科技产品循环周期，好像是已经结束了。二八六、三八六和伴随它的视窗更新时代，似乎也已经寿终正寝了。在那一轮科技产品循环中不可一世的戴尔电脑等科技产品制造商，也已经成为没落的昔日“贵族”。

那么，取代它的新一轮的科技产品新循环是不是已经开始了？

好像是。而且，它的核心领头羊应该就是苹果公司，而它的特点则是小而快速，这个快速，不仅仅只是“上网”速度上的快速，而且还是携带方便上的“快速”。智能化，高质量，也是其特色之一。

问题是，苹果借助于这个新的循环，将自己推向了世界上最值钱的科技公司的巅峰之后，好像有点缺乏后续推力了。其跌跌不休的股价，似乎在向世人说明：这个循环周期，是不是也已经开始进入末日了？

如果是，那么，取代它的又会是什么呢？

如果不是，那么，紧接着下来的，又会是什么呢？

至少，那些咋咋呼呼一时的GroupOn这样的“新媒体”公司，肯定是不能担当大任的，即使是像面书这样的巨人，好像也已经前程堪忧，更别说已经成为昔日黄花的微软和Cisco这样的公司了。

如果你能够慧眼识珠，看到下一轮科技产品循环的开端，并且正确地识别出核心的领头羊，那么，你就有大发一回的机会了。十倍的升值实现，是很容易让普通人变成富翁的。在中国，很多普通人不就是通过地产来实现十倍以上的升值而使自己富裕的吗？！在英特尔时代，很多公司的股票，也给不少的普通人带来十倍甚至是几十倍的升值机会。

花点时间，动点脑筋，或许，你就能够在细微之处发现一个崭新的新天地的。

下面这篇文章对于你理顺一下思路会有点帮助。

TECH VIEW: New Investment Cycle in Technology: Mobile Beats PC

1/7/13 | Dow Jones, By John Shinal 

It used to be a lot easier to judge exactly where we were in a tech investment cycle, until Apple Inc. and other tablet and smartphone makers disrupted a 30-year pattern. 

Before the rise of the iPhone, iPad and Android-based mobile devices, the purchasing of new technologies by businesses had held to a consistent pattern for three decades. 

This road map was valuable to tech investors because predicting which technologies corporate customers were buying -- and when -- was key to finding the fastest revenue growth in the sector. It also helped traders avoid losses in the shares of chip makers or sellers of PCs, storage and networking gear, as well as for stocks in purveyors of software or business-consulting services that were in the downside of an investment cycle. 

But that model has been turned on its head, because the rise of mobile connectivity and the slow death of the personal-computer market are slowly fusing the enterprise and consumer markets. 

In the old pattern, chip makers like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. bought chip equipment from the likes of Applied Materials Inc., Novellus Systems Inc. and KLA-Tencor. Computer makers like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. put those chips into PCs they sold to businesses. 

Enterprises then bought networking gear from Cisco Systems Inc. and others to tie all those PCs together, and storage equipment from EMC Corp. and others. Finally came the enterprise software, usually from International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., SAP AG and/or Adobe Systems Inc. (and usually installed by business and IT consultants), which ultimately allowed businesses to extract value from their investments. 

While there were notable exceptions -- the emergence of the Internet was a boon to makers of networking gear and servers, for example -- the beginning of a new cycle would usually start with the release of more-powerful chips. 

The downward cycle usually came when slowing orders at chip-equipment makers coincided with rising inventories at chip and PC companies. That inflection point was often the prompt for big money managers to begin underweighting tech stocks in favor of other sectors. 

Paradigm shift 

Yet new chips are no longer the most important driver of an upgrade cycle. The main force for this is the proliferation of ever more-powerful apps running on mobile devices. 

That's why the so-called Wintel duopoly is dying, and why it's no surprise that outgoing Intel (INTC) Chief Executive Paul Otellini doesn't want to stick around to see the end of it. 

It's also why I've been trying to warn any investor concerned with growth (versus dividend income) to stay away from Microsoft (MSFT), because the speed at which the old model will disintegrate can't be underestimated. 

After 30 years of integrating wave after wave of new technologies, most companies don't run their businesses in any way that resembles their old management processes. That's why investors shouldn't be betting on the stocks of companies whose revenue-growth models pretend they do. 

You have only to look at Apple's (AAPL) $500 billion market cap and the stagnant growth of tech companies that depend on the Wintel duopoly for evidence that investors face a different tech economy. Indeed, rather than leveling off, the digestion of new technologies by enterprises is accelerating, and from the ground up. 

As handheld devices become more sophisticated, and the apps on them are increasingly robust, corporate enterprises are beginning to let more workers use them for their daily tasks. 

This is making the consumer-tech buyer the driver of upgrade cycles and revenue growth. This also is why tech investors should be betting on chip and component makers whose product road maps are focused on the mobile consumer, rather than the deskbound corporate worker. 

Now that the new pattern is established, it's going to run for years, if not decades, presenting a very large revenue opportunity for companies that can exploit it. 

Apple may continue to capture the largest share of revenue from the beautiful monster it helped create, but its market cap means that investors who want to put new money into tech will have to look elsewhere for their next home run. 

That includes makers of chips based on designs by ARM Holdings PLC (ARMHY), handheld-component companies and the Internet-based software startups whose business models are based on the new tech economy. 

This column devoted a lot of space in 2012 to the newly public social-media companies, because the IPOs of LinkedIn Corp., Groupon Inc., Zynga Inc. and Facebook Inc., among others, prompted warnings to investors about the dangers of their frothy valuations. 

As investors learned the hard way, the valuations assigned to those companies by private investors weren't sustainable once the public markets got to see the details of their unprofitable business models. 

That unfortunate pain was last year's news. In 2013, Tech Investor will increase its coverage of hardware, software and services firms whose products are targeted at the mobile worker/consumer. The goal will be to help investors find the next Intel, the next Microsoft or even the next Apple, all while continuing to tell the best stories we can find in Silicon Valley, New York, Seattle, Austin, Texas and other tech hubs.