In his now famous 2011 Wall Street Journal article, ‘Why software is eating the world’, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and tech icon Marc Andreessen predicted a “dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies were poised to take over large swathes of the economy”.
Apple announced some pretty huge improvements to its software last week, and it’s clear that under Tim Cook the company is deviating quite significantly from its heritage as a predominantly closed eco-system.
By opening up Siri, Messaging, and Maps to third-party developers, Apple is well on its way to disrupting its OS proposition.
And with it, Apple (and others) is steering us towards the third wave of digital transformation, the ‘Platform Economy’.
June 29th 2007 is noteworthy for being the day Apple ushered in the biggest technology and business transition in history with the release of the iPhone.
And it looks like when we connect the dots in five to ten years time, April 12th 2016, will be a date that is just as significant.
If there is one thing Mobile World Congress 2016 confirmed – amongst all the talk of wearables, the IoT and virtual reality being the future – it’s the fact that we are living in what is now a truly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
Today every company is pretty much a technology company, with digital transformation affecting businesses across all sectors, and no doubt in 12 months’ time at MWC17 the business and technology landscape will shift again.
It is little wonder that organisations are struggling to adapt and keep up.