I was fascinated by Steve Balmers interview in the Washington Post this week.  The core quotation for me was

"Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form". 

So this sort of prediction has been around for years.  But this time is goes a lot further - this time he is implying that the publishers who remain in "paper only" will become dinosaurs and further all other publishers will have most to Internet only delivery.  A further knife in the back for the big branded publishers was

"Also in the world of 10 years from now, there are going to be far more producers of content than exist today. We've already started to see that certainly in the online world"

So is this really going to come true?  Yes, I think it is.  This prediction did not come from "hot air". Microsoft will have paid a lot of money for this prediction and it will be substantiated via a lot of unpublished analysis.  Steve Balmer will be retiring in 10 years and he's paid for a prediction which could be used as he epitaph for the industry.

Then today I read in the UK's Sunday Times about the success of Amazon's Kindle and it's the same story about the death of publishing books on paper.  The Kindle is selling extremely well in the US and is amazingly already taking 6% of book sales that are available for both the Kindle and paper - here the prediction is that Authors could sell direct to Amazon (dissintermediating the publisher all together).

So are these predictions signalling the death of the big branded publishers?  No, they do not go that far - for sure the big successful brands will adapt and survive - there is still a need for quality and consitency.  However, it does signal a need for them to adapt and that they will get smaller audiences from their existing countries. The number of content producers will continue to increase and take their own share of the audiences.  The good news for everyone is the world audience for internet media is going to signficantly increase.  The growth of the mobile internet in countries such as India, South Africa, Indonesia, China and countries in the middle east is already massive.  So long as the publishers produce relevant localised content they will be able to benefit from the globalisation of publishing.

Others will benefit too.  I do think a more prevasive Kindle and publishing platform is a Mobile phone.  So phone manufacturers and those providing the software services for them (such as ourselves) will benefit - and that's was really interests me.