"The overall communications market is expanding due to convergence," said Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon's CEO, speaking at a conference in New York earlier this week. This expansion will not be just a linear function of combining voice, data and video into a single offering, said Seidenberg, but a much broader expansion of telecom spending. Verizon estimates the overall U.S. telecom services market will grow from $440 million in 2004 to $570 million in 2009. Almost all the growth is projected to come from home entertainment or communication services, wireless services, and enterprise service. To capitalize on this opportunity, Verizon is pursuing a long-term strategy of building its FiOS consumer brand, upgrading its wireless network for 3G, and acquiring MCI. Seidenberg said key differentiators for the upcoming FiOS TV service will include 175 all-digital video and music channels, competitive pricing, more HD channels (over 20) than cable competitors, at least 1,800 VOD titles, and a much more friendly interactive programming guide. Furthermore, early market trials for FiOS TV in Keller, Texas, have been "nothing short of spectacular." A consumer take rate of 30 percent has been well ahead of the company's expectations.
Every product roadmap conversation with a technology vendor now runs through one filter that has nothing to do with the roadmap itself: does the company have an AI story that a buyer's finance team would actually underwrite. Forrester Research just gave that gut check a formal structure. Its newly introduced AI Disruption Model evaluates 17 technology and service categories, spanning more than 200 individual markets, against nine factors including AI substitutability, labor intensity, and switching costs. The finding that should reorder tech vendor strategy conversations this quarter is not which markets grow. It is how few of them do, and what that scarcity means for everyone else. Only Three Categories Get an Unambiguous Green Light According to the research, infrastructure providers such as cloud platforms, data centers, and storage; data and AI providers spanning models, platforms, and governance tooling; and cybersecurity and identity providers covering zero trust and AI agent...