When I do my US tech market sizing and forecasting, I start with the data on business investment in computer equipment, communications equipment, and software in the quarterly National Accounts of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  As Forrester’s recently published report on the US tech market noted (see September 28, 2012, "US Tech Market Outlook Dims For 2012 To 2013 -- US Tech Market Spending Will Maintain A Mediocre 4% to 5% Pace"), the BEA in July revised the historic data on these categories of business investment going back to 2009, significantly reducing the size of tech investment in this period and lowering the growth rate of business tech investment to a pace not appreciably faster than the growth rate in the US economy.

While I adjusted my tech market sizings and forecasts to these lower numbers from the BEA, I have been wondering whether the BEA in their data collection is missing key segments of new technology, and thus understating the level of tech buying that is actually going on.  We have no good way of answering this question since the BEA has not publicly indicated that there have been any changes in data sources and aggregation methods that would signs of undermeasurement.  Still, here are the questions I would ask BEA if I had the chance.

We’d like to know what job responsibilities give CIOs insomnia, either by responding to this blog or by contacting us directly to be interviewed. The interviews will take less than an hour and go over this question as well as others including:

1. What decisions do you regularly make?
2. What sources of information do you use?
3. What IT decisions are made by IT versus the business?

We are in the early stages of interviews, but the initial responses to the question of what keeps CIOs up at night were very interesting. Some, as expected, focused on tactical and immediate problems. They included:

• Security: “I don’t ever want to see [my company’s] name in the paper for a security problem.”
• Small mistakes: “A tiny piece of code could have brought the organization to its knees.”
• Turnover: “We have two people maintaining one of our ancient core systems, and both could retire soon.”

But there were unexpected responses in that they focused on the long term. Some of these long-term insomnia inducers were:

• Investments: “Does the money I’m putting in now make sense for the future?”
• Staff leadership: “Do I have the right mix of outsourced and internal staff?”
• Reality: “I’m struggling matching reality with where we’re heading.” 

It’s safe to say that the early adopters of Apple’s iPad didn’t go out and buy the device because they wanted a new gadget for work. They purchased the iPad because of what they could do in their everyday lives. But it didn’t take long for employees to bring their iPads to the office. If we mark the modern tablet era by Apple’s 2010 iPad launch then an astounding 84 million iPads and as many as 120 million tablets in total have flown off the shelves. Forrester’s global workforce and decision-maker surveys and client conversations show just how fast tablets are being adopted:

• Three-quarters of a billion tablets will be in use by 2016. It took more than 20 years for the PC to reach an installed base of 750 million people. But tablets will surpass that mark in less than half the time. Global tablet sales will top 375 million in 2016 with about one-third of tablets acquired by businesses for employees. Back in 2007, we wrote that to reach the second billion users, the computer market would be driven by lower cost hardware, useful applications, and easy access to the Internet from anywhere. Tablets fit that bill to a tee.
•  Some 82% of firms expect to support tablets for employees. Companies are getting tablet fever as 82% of firms report interest in using tablets. According to these IT decision makers, tablets will come into the enterprise via several doors, including employees bringing their own: Our latest survey of global information workers shows that 12% use tablets and 8% paid for it themselves. And more than half of the 1,004 firms we surveyed plan to increase their spending on mobile devices and apps by at least 10% next year.

I was pretty sure that the v1 (beta?) Apple Maps would have gaps and gaffs, and of course it does. Mapping is hard to do as this excellent analysis from Adrian Covert at Gizmodo makes clear. (If Apple had it to do over again, it might have pushed harder to keep the Google Map app in place while Apple launched a beta map alongside it. Maybe it still can.)

But Apple had to do maps. It had no choice, really. The reason is simple: maps are the place where mobile matters most. Here's the logic:

• First, maps are where the physical context of our daily lives and reality intersects the digital intelligence we access online. It is precisely because maps are where the physical best intersects the digital that Apple had to offer maps. Maps are extremely valuable to customers, hence to Apple. It couldn't outsource it to Google forever if it wanted to develop a unique mobile engagment experience to customers. For that matter, Microsoft has to do (and is doing) exactly the same. It's also why Nokia purchased NAVTEQ in 2008  for $8.1 billion.
• Second, developers are finding fabulous ways to exploit maps in their applications. Overlaying just about anything on a map makes the map more valuable. Shoppers benefit. Cyclists benefit. City planners benefit. Even the military benefits. Anybody dealing with physical locations needs maps in their app. And that means great APIs to access the map, a way to put layers over the map to show important things, and a way to crowdsource new information. Flickr's photos on maps in a great way to explore a vacation spot before getting on an airplane. All because of great map apps.