Doug, wbmw, can I have a turn? -
Itanium predictions, short term (2004):
1. Intel will hit or exceed 200,000 shipped this year. The sequential growth rate will be faster in H1 than H2, despite seasonality.
2. Application porting will stall at around 1500 apps ported. Some apps ported from the x86 market will start to age as newer versions are ported to AMD64.
3. The press will continue to trumpet Opteron as the success, even though Itanium has been repositioned to a smaller market. That's the press for you!
Long term (end of decade, Astronomic definition, 2009):
1. Itanium will not succeed in displacing x86 on the desktop, laptop or commodity server markets. It's market will pretty much be higher-end HP machines. It will find a comfortable niche there.
2. The three dominant high-end architectures will be Itanium, Power and AMD64. Segmented x86 architecture will be a fond memory from us old farts only.
3. Wide adoption (finally) of HDTV will smooth the transition of the home PC to a $100 entertainment box, and the remote control will be the main input mechanism. $500 entertainment servers will supply content (games, movies, etc.) to multiple entertainment centers in the home. PowerPC and Athlon64/Pentium64 derivatives will dominate this market. Unique PC monitors will be history. (Prices are in constant dollars, HDTV sold seperately.)
Office PCs will be be based on Athlon64/Pentium64 and will be built into flat- & wide-screen monitors, hung on the cubicle wall. If one places the keyboard on a keyboard tray then the PC will take zero desktop space.
Oh - Intel's biggest revenue product will not be Itanium or P4. It will be TV electronics.
Y'all are invited to bookmark this post and bring it up on the appropriate New Years. It should be a lot of fun!
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