So one of the most important contributors defining a digital vision has to be an investment trust because based upon their vision they decide how they choose to invest their customer's funds. So let us look at the Polar Capital Technology Trust.
An analysis in the Times Newspaper (20/10/20) in their Business Markets - Tempus (Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips) covered Polar Capital Technology priced at £23.06. So reading this everyday why have I decided to blog on this particular investment trust. Well it is because through their holdings you see their technology market vision and it happens to coincide with mine. The owners of the central data centres, the “edge” hardware devices (eg smartphones) and the chip foundries supporting both the cloud and edge technologies with microprocessors and memory are going to own the digital future. Missing are the owners of the networks which are needed to connect the cloud with the edge. As the article eludes to the biggest fear for this monopolising tranche of businesses is government intervention and the China verse America trading standoff.
So why as an individual entrepreneur should this fund be of an interest to me. Well I am looking to invest my time and effort into digital projects. DMB Publishing with the Digital Documents initiative needs to make its investments of time and effort into coherent “platforms”. A platform is an infrastructure running through from creation to marketing to selling to distribution. The focus I have is on digital deliverables. The current popular digital deliverables are the fixed textural and visual images leading to the moving media of sound and video. These are the areas being sucked into the digital paradigm. But soon to follow will be the revolution in the physical deliverables. Many physical deliverables will still be centrally manufactured due to the capital investment required to manufacture them. But a trend will develop towards the sale of instructions distributed to drive your local manufacturing unit. You will increasingly make physical things yourself using these home based standardised manufacturing units.
The strange thing is the creation of the digital infrastructure
which has now enabled everybody to participate in eCommerce has created the
opportunity for individual craft or small craft industries to flourish. The new
deliver to your door distribution capabilities which are both fast and economic
has opened up completely new markets. Covid-19 has also changed the location of
the working population to working from home rather than from an office. This
has overnight changed the whole dynamics of the working population with
employers forced to now “trust” workers to undertake their work from home.
Previously whilst the digital technologies existed the “trust” aspect did not so
it took Covid-19 to force employers to trust their employees to work at home.
The other major trend is what I term the individual or business digital
control element. Increasingly the trend will be to want to take complete
digital control of your life. To centrally manage all your financial inputs and
outgoings along with any savings and investments. This will extend into
managing all projects from personal events to home purchase and improvement
projects. You will be required to select your “life” control digital provider.
Businesses will similarly select “business” digital controllers designed to
support specific business types. Control software itself will become a digital
commodity.
You can see Amazon as a leader in the “physical” world but looking
to gain hold on “digital” deliverables. Google owning “search” but looking to
secure more of the digital deliverables. Facebook owning the “social” but looking
to whilst maintaining this genre capture both physical and digital
deliverables. Microsoft looking to hold the business world users to use their operating systems and apps whilst through their LinkedIn business “social” site increase user engagement.
There will always be a chance for new digital upstarts to try and
capture territory off existing players or to generate new digital genre. The
young are an ideal feeding ground to set new trends. You also have to be
prepared to see digital businesses die off since digital is now a fashion
industry. So we have witnessed the rise and fall of numerous social platforms
in the past like Myspace, Bebo and Google + whilst others are working hard to
gain ground like Snapchat. Whilst even Twitter has gone through difficult periods of establishing itself as a key social media player.
TikTok gained enormous ground based upon the short form video format
now so popular with users of the sophisticated smartphones with powerful video
creation and editing capabilities. The ability to instantly post these videos and to get the instant social media feedback has made this a popular pastime for the younger generation. But being Chinese owned it has had its future
put under American government scrutiny. To compete with TikTok Facebook, never missing a trick, in
August 2020 added Instagram Reels complimenting Instagram Stories to its
portfolio of “front end” data capture and display capabilities.
Amazon is just as pro-active in terms of capturing the “social
media” element of computer gaming where they want to dominate the sale of digital
games through acquiring twitch.tv with its online real time videoing often run
alongside the gamers playing their games. Although considered “niche” initially
it is now acquiring a broader user base than just the gamers. It represents real time online television style broadcasting. Facebook and Google through YourTube have both responded by investing heavily in supporting this online television style "individual" broadcasting.
Google left the “social media” genre when they closed down Google
+ but through their owner Alphabet they certainly have the financial muscle to
re-enter the marketplace if they choose to do so with YouTube offering them a powerful foundation.
Apple has increasingly focussed upon looking to gain digital revenues
rather than just depending on their Apple smartphone. But owing the “edge”
hardware in the form of their smartphones, tablets, personal computers and televisions
allows them the sort of security that emulates from owning the “physical”
rather than the “digital”. Particularly since the trend will to be in the
future building what had previously been “software” into the “hardware” covering
both microprocessor and memory. This fact has not been missed by both Google
and Amazon. Google owning the competing smartphone software in the form of Android
as against Apple’s iOS is encouraging them more into the hardware ownership
areas with their Google Pixel smartphone. Amazon has ventured this way with
their Fire Tablets evolved from the failed eBook Reader concepts with it now
supporting very cheaply multi-media activities particularly their growth of
Amazon Prime as a programme creator business.
So Polar Capital Technology looks to have the digital vision.
