As in music, 1998 haven't been the year that revolutionized the world of computers. The power of processors doubled again this year, but it's like this almost every year, the speed of CD-ROMs went from 24X to 40X (1X=150 Kb/sec), but the biggest games still don't require better than 8X, the standards for RAM memory haven't really changed, the modems are still at 56K, the 64 and 128 voices sound cards aren't sold very well (and I understand why, because a good Sound Blaster 16 can do very well), the standard screen is still at 15 inches, etc... Only one component knew a significative grownth: the hard disk. Last year, the standard hard disk was 2,1 Gig and the best one available was about 5 Gig and these numbers would be most likely today 6,4 Gig and 13,6 Gig.  Also, we assisted at the advent of 2 components: the 3D accelerating cards and the CD writers.

    In software industry, there also haven't been a lot of movement so far. The market of the archiver is similar to 97 (WinZip ahead, PKZip following, then RAR and WinRAR), the one of the MP3 player too (Winamp at more than 60% of the market, but however a new one made its mark this year, Microsoft Windows Media Player 5, but believe me, it doesn't worth the download), the one of the office suite too (Microsoft Office 97 first, Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 second and Lotus SmartSuite 97 third), by the way, the market of the word-processor is alike too (Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect and Lotus WordPro in order), etc... A little bit more change with the anti-viruses (Norton Anti-Virus became very popular, on the other hand F-Prot is sinking and new ones like AntiViral Toolkit Pro arrived), but McAfee is still confortable on top. For the games, nothing very important. There have been no incredible new hit except maybe Tomb Raider III, and even there... The sequels Descent FreeSpace, Descent 3 and Blood 2 haven't got so much success, in fact the most popular game this year would probably be Quake 2, neither the most popular, neither the greatest game ever... Hopefully, 2 markets have been more interesting: the one of the operating system (OS) and the one of the Web browser. For the OS, no, Windows 98 haven't bring anything good (it even brought some bad!), but we aren't watching Microsoft OSes so much anymore, but more this little Linux who's growing at an incredible speed! Its gratuitousness it a lot, but it is also very stable and interesting. Here is below the market share of the OS in 1997, the market share of 98 as estimated by me (these numbers aren't based on serious studies) and my own predictions for 1999. For the Web browser, let's just say that Microsoft Internet Explorer (42,8% of the market in 97) has now reached Netscape (50,5% of the market in 97) with something near 48% for each in 1998 and that the new one Opera, yet very impressive (a little bit faster, a lot more compact and working just not as well as the two giants), doesn't have a big impact for the moment with a market share of about 1,5%.

Oh, and do you want some predictions concerning the Web browser? It will all depend on the final judgement of the antitrust trial against Microsoft. If the american justice allows Gates to continue tying  Internet Explorer and Windows, then I think that MS IE should exceed the 50% of marketr pour une première année. Si, au contraire, elle fait son devoir et agit (mon opinion personnel), alors au contraire Netscape pourrait remonter la barre des 50% et Internet Explorer redescendre (surtout qu'on attend beaucoup de Netscape Communicator 5.0 qui verra le jour en 99). Dans les deux cas, Opera prendra de l'expension, mais ne dépassera assurément pas 4%, et tous les autres petits fureteurs (Arachne, QNX Voyager, Lynx, Mosaic, IBrowse, Cyberdog et autres) en subieront les conséquences.
 

Powhertz
99/01/09
 

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