The Dominant Ecosystem in Technology

Analysis from Fidelity Investments Market Analysis, Research & Education group:

Roughly once every decade, there is a dominant ecosystem that emerges in technology.

Fidelity's technology, media and telecom equity sector research teams are bullish on mobile Internet due to its potential to emerge as the next ecosystem, which has significant investment implications across multiple industries.

The research team looked at individual product cycles and penetration rates across multiple geographies, to analyze historical patterns of adoption across a variety of consumer technology products over several decades (examples: VCR to DVD players, and CDs to iPods).

This analysis led to the conclusion that adoption rates for second-generation consumer technology products typically ramp faster than the initial device that defined the market, leading to conviction in accelerating smartphone adoption at a rate faster than took place for cell phones (and more generally, that mobile Internet penetration is occurring faster than desktop Internet).