The Blueprint

Amazon's "Digital Services"

An interesting tidbit from a Washington DC periodical Daily Biznow.  Amazon's first quarter sales are up 18% over last year (close to $5 billion).  Here's what's really interesting.  Now 42% of their revenue comes from electronics such as the Kindle rather than books. 

I posted about an HBR article about Amazon in October of 2007.  Jeff Bezos and his management team's emphasis was on helping customers find the right content at the right price in the format they prefer.  It seems that more people are preferring the digital content.  There are a lot of simularities with the AEC reprographics market.  If you are in the business of only printing there is a limited and declining market.  If you are in the business of giving people choices as to how they get content there is a growing market.  Printing still is the preferred option, but having the choice is important.  

Turbo-Charged Inkjet Technology on the Horizon

Almost exactly two years ago I had a post on the Memjet technology.  It seemed that this technology had promise, but the road from prototype to production is often a longer than marketers and consumers would like.   At the CES show they are demonstrating technology for the office market and make claims that products will be available in mid 2009.  Memjet representatives have been sighted at wide-format tradeshows as well including the IRgA trade shows.  Below is a video of the Memjet technology being demonstrated at the 2009 CES show.

Approaching Infinity

A fascinating interview with Eric Schmidt, Chairman & CEO of Google, on Charlie Rose.  In discussion about Moore's Law Eric says "in 15 years computing power will be 1,000 times cheaper and faster...... I have a grandson.  He will be 18 in 15 years.  He will have all of the worlds information every video, every movie and so forth on a single hard drive.  if he started watching it, he cannot finish watching it in 85 years."  

 

What will your business look like in 5, 10, 15 years and how will these changes in technology change the services you offer your customers?