The big numbers story this January is that General Motors has held on to it’s spot as number one car manufacturer in the US over Toyota who has beaten Ford for the first time:

Toyota sold 48,226 more cars and trucks than Ford, according to sales figures released today. Toyota’s sales were up 3 percent for the year, buoyed by new products like the Toyota Tundra pickup, which saw sales jump 57 percent.

On a global basis it is expected that Toyota will overtake General Motors as the world’s largest auto maker with approximately 9.51M vehicles sold. The bigger story is the continuing decline in relevance of the US auto market to the rest of the world. The biggest stories are in Asia especially China and India where the growth of new vehicles are stunning. Toyota and it’s Asian counterparts are investing heavily in production in new markets and the results are starting to show.

Toyota also has a major cost and profit advantage to the (formerly) big 3 and is able to invest more heavily in new initiatives while the older automakers struggle to reduce capacity in the North American markets.

Ultimately however these numbers are meaningless and only really of interest for interest sake, much like personal computer market share. I have always been critical of personal computer market share numbers because they really don’t mean anything other than for interest sake. Lumping contact center personal computer workstation with a home user with a notebook user doesn’t mean much to anyone. The monolithic market for personal computers does not mean anything. What is far more interest is between relative uses such as notebooks for professionals, education market, multimedia uses, and home use.

My criticism for this number is also in how this is used. For example, a common misapprehension goes like this: Window has 90% plus share of the market therefore Microsoft must win with mobile phones and it is only a matter of time”. We all know that the true is that the market is very fragmented with Nokia/Symbian having the largest share (although 90% of the users don’t use 90% of the function).

Experience like Toyota tells us that the future is based not on directly challenging the large lumbering monopolies or (oligopolies) but to look for growth in niches that can turn into large markets. Toyota dominates the small car and now hybrid markets. They made the decision in the mid 90s that oil prices long term trend is upwards (peak oil etc etc) and they had to dominate the market when that occurs.

Dell is looking decidedly like Ford with it’s over reliance on the corporate market. It’s poor R&D spend is coming back to hurt them. HP is not a personal computer company but a full service computing organization with a personal computer division. It’s R&D and services business make it attractive to corporations as an alternative to IBM. Acer is looking more like Toyota as a fast growing Asian.

The long-term trend is not generic corporate workstations who will always be heavily discounted, but trends in computing, largely mobile in nature. Take for example the iPOD, it is a mobile computing device for music delivery. It is a personal computer but designed to do one thing well.

Predictions

• Generic Windows Computing will continue its inevitable decline. Microsoft will be the only one making money in this sector and because Dell is heavily dependent on this market, it will continue to decline as HP, Acer and others continue to take market share.
• There will be a host of new sub notebook designs this year from Apple and others that will be flash memory based or based on the new super small hard disks.
• Look for the rise of the personal assistant devices (PDA) again lead by Apple. The Apple touch technology will be used in both PDA and subnotebook formats. Both will have the ability to use the Bluetooth keyboard and mighty mouse and sync with core Mac hardware wirelessly.
• Tablet computing has always suffered because it was designed as a general purpose computing device that is mobile. Tablet computing needs to be application centric with tools that allow it meet specific functions. Hats off to Panasonic with their toughbook range. They found a niche and build the product to meet it. Look for GPS enabled functionality built in this year and application centric tablet devices.

As you can see I am bullish on mobile computing as making the most head way this year. However I also see home computing, read multimedia capabilities moving forward quickly this year. The iLife suite from Apple has been a deciding factor for many people to move to the Apple Mac at home. Look for some major movement in wireless home entertainment including media extension devices such as the Apple TV.

As for my out their prediction, Apple will make a big acquisition this year on it’s quest to be the home computing king. Apple will purchase Bose or Harmon International, both high end entertainment hardware manufacturers. They will commit to integrate their products with both blue tooth and Wifi N networking to build a complete experience in the living room.

Other than that, have a great new year….