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“Last week’s massive falls in the Australian share-market have frightened Australians. Now 49% are expecting bad times for the Australian economy over the next year — the highest number since the recession of 1991-92.

“Only 26% of Australians say that now is a “good time to buy” major household items — the lowest mark since 1991-92. This is especially worrying for Australian retailers given the importance of the Christmas shopping season to their profitability and continued viability.

If there's one positive to emerge from the global economic
crisis it's that prices of TV sets, digital cameras and other
technology products should stay low, despite the significant drop
in the value of the currency, retailers and economists say.

The Australian dollar dropped to a 5½-year low of 63 US
cents last week, significantly increasing the price of imported
goods. This morning it was trading at 66 US cents, down nearly 5
per cent on yesterday's close of 70 US cents.

"We continue to see a rapid
transition to Portable PCs around the world, even as economic pressures
rise," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC
Tracker. "The trend reflects the increasing importance of computing, not
just in the home or office, but as an integrated part of our lives. Falling
prices, more design choice and competition for PC makers to capture this market
continue to drive a rapid transition."

"The right way to gauge
the success of consumer PCs is no longer the adoption rate of households with
PCs, or even the number of PCs per household, but rather the number of machines
per individual," said Bob O'Donnell, vice president, Clients and Displays.
"The increasing form factor diversity in notebooks as well as desktops is
enabling people to justify multiple PC purchases. In the commercial space,
companies continue to see the value of refreshing their PCs and are maintaining
surprisingly healthy purchasing patterns."

* Forecast data

Source: IDC
Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, September 2008

This year, Accenture’s technology vision outlines some broad areas, including Cloud Computing, enhanced business intelligence capabilities, continuous access of content, to people, social computing, growth of user-generated content and Green computing.

The rapid advancement of hardware virtualisation, intelligent networks, utility computing, Software as a Service and rich Internet applications will make the location of computing less relevant. This will redefine the role of IT departments.

Increasing use of powerful and easy-to-use mobile devices and Software as a Service will lead to ubiquity of communication and access to applications and data anywhere.

The continuity of usage will enable serve providers to easily track and profile users.

Social computing is set to impact individuals and enterprises as sharing information breaks traditional hierarchies, encouraging collaboration.

The explosion of user generated content, be it videos, photos, blogs and podcasts, will grow and new delivery channels, such as television networks, and aggregation players such as YouTube will emerge.

New software tools will make creation and integration of information a lot easier then ever before. New development methods will be used more extensively.

Green Computing will play a vital role in the green movement, with focus on optimising energy usage.