"Cloud" brings hope to some tech giants

June 2012 is the one months that the tech industry has entered a new era. June 11, Apple shows the company's next-generation operating system for devices such as the iphone and ipad, which provides maps and voice-recognition capabilities, plus music and movie features on itunes, but all of these functions are via the internet and the "cloud" of Apple servers Connected.

In the week that followed, Microsoft, which has been more software-renowned, has also shown its Surface tablet, a product for the ipad. Surface can be connected to Web pages and Microsoft's cloud application, Windows Azure. Shortly thereafter, Google (Weibo) also launched its latest "cloud" mobile phone and tablet computer in Wednesday, as well as a media player named Nexus Q, which is connected to the devices, the Internet and Google Cloud.

Today's computer industry is developing at an extremely rapid pace, with a trillions of-dollar industry moving away from many PCs (PC) devices with Microsoft Windows software and Intel's semiconductor chips. Last year, the total revenue from the so-called "Wintel (Microsoft and Intel)" desktops and laptops from Dell and HP brands is about $70 billion trillion, but in fact, the products that Apple, Microsoft and Google showed this June are almost irrelevant to companies like HP and Dell.

Asked what role they would like to play in the "cloud"-led future, Dell declined to answer the question. However, a Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman said in a statement that HP's computer servers and software had "penetrated into the top 80% of the world's highest-flow Web sites and infiltrated four-fifths of the world's largest search engines, and infiltrated into the three most popular social media in the United States." However, HP's spokeswoman did not comment on the company's PC business.

The future momentum of technology will also pose a threat and challenge to Intel, which is currently looking for a diversified development model that is now widely used in Apple computers and many other devices. Intel still has a high status in the chip market, but the chip interest rate is low, and the market is extremely competitive. Nvidia, another chip company, has been heavily supported by Google's products.

Today, we have seen a new commercial ecosystem emerge, in which various mobile and cloud-connected devices have emerged. Each device connected to the cloud service is a powerful computer that can be connected to the infinity of data storage and processing in the cloud. "We are entering a new era in which consumer electronics are hardware, software and cloud," said Matt Hershenson, head of Google's hardware business, Natte Hessenson. "The view of Na also involves a lot of business calculation."

Coincidentally, this past Friday is just the five anniversary of Apple's iphone launch. The cloud-based iphone app, developed by outside developers this week, will also usher in its fourth anniversary. In addition, Google last year, also known as the test of cloud equipment is now almost the mainstream products.

Current users are working with iphones and various Tablet PCs. It is said that more than 5 million of corporate users now use Google's cloud-based application to write documents and make spreadsheets. At the same time, Microsoft, once thought to be at the top risk during the transition to cloud services, began selling 273 of commercial and financial applications in the company's Cloud store Azure marketplace. In this new ecosystem, many rules are still being worked out. Although Amazon already has a Kindle tablet and a successful Network computing cloud service and a software store, the company may not yet be an important player in the cloud sector. The Barnes bookstore may also be like Amazon, which currently lacks a large cloud data center.

Of course, some of these days are already very clear. A major focus of today's technology industry is to control hundreds of millions of computers in the cloud, connect them organically through the cloud, and then work with an app store so that users can discover, sell, and manage applications. Perhaps only a handful of physical stores in the future are still selling apps, but the sales channel still works. The iphone was still being sold through Apple's retail stores even after the relevant apps were introduced. Those applications are written primarily by software developers outside the company. For many years, developers have played a very important role in the development of the technology industry. If a company can provide these developers with decent software manufacturing tools and potentially a large number of user groups, as Microsoft does, these developers will create a variety of products for the company to attract users. When only PCs were used, these applications focused on computer game products, but now there are a number of applications, such as the Angry Birds.

In the Wintel field, a variety of new versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system are launched almost every few years, with a number of major software projects closely linked to desktop and laptop computers. By comparison, Apple has announced 6 versions of its mobile operating system in less than five years. Google's OS "Chrome" for cloud computing laptops is updated almost every 6 weeks. At this June's developer conference, Google attracted developers to help them launch more consumer products before Christmas. "The sense of urgency has a whole new meaning in the current situation and you should not neglect it," said Andy Peterson, senior software engineer at L4 Mobile, who makes the enterprise mobile applications. "L4 Mobile has been making apps for companies like Sony and MTV. In addition, Paterson was one of 5,500 developers who came to Google last week's developer conference, saying: "Last September, I started working for Google, and now I'm going to launch the fourth app." ”

Dell and Hewlett-Packard may not be happy with the rise of cloud computing, but there is no need to feel blue. In a large number of devices, continuous experience may also need to comply with the cloud software, but the hardware is the basis of this experience depends on. This is why Steve Jobs has so long insisted on keeping Apple in control of hardware and software, and why Apple is rigorously picking out which individual apps can enter the company's App Store.

On the face of it, Microsoft appears to be showing off the surface tablet, ignoring the concerns of longtime hardware partners, but may now allow these partners to build the product. Google's most powerful partnership with other hardware companies seems to be the relationship with Samsung, but the company's newest tablet partner is Asus, from Taiwan, China.

Google claims it has been seeking to work with other companies, but the companies must reinvent themselves, using only a handful of their own knowledge to deal with how the company uses technology, rather than creating cheaper PCs. Sandar Pitza, senior vice president of Google's Chrome business, Sundar Pichai, said: "All that HP and Dell can do is to understand the needs of the business, and they can say, ' This is our tablet, we have the phone product, that's how it can run in your company. ' But we don't have a sales team that can do that. ”

Perhaps that would mean abandoning the consumer market more or less, but being able to outperform that traditional old world.

(Editor: Lu Guang)