5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

COMMENTARY While most of high tech holds some hope for a better 2012, not all companies, executives, employees and investors will be happy.

Changes already been under way will accelerate. The results will undoubtedly make some individuals and companies wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. But for all the winners, there will be losers. That doesn't mean they'll all suffer terribly, but they will find that mixed in with the blessings of their positions will be some sizable lumps of coal.

5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

Apple fails to take down Android

Apple (AAPL) has tried mightily to curtail Google (GOOG) and Android at every turn. But whether trying to keep Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet out of such regions as the EU and Australia or bringing suit in the U.S. against HTC or Motorola, the legal successes have actually been moderate.

Companies are finding workarounds. For example, HTC will remove the feature that gave Apple a win at the U.S. International Trade Commission. A German court says that Samsung's redesigned Galaxy Tab tablet does not infringe Apple's patents.

I'm among the authors who have written about the patent wars, and there are some patents newly granted to Apple that look as though they could make life difficult for Android manufacturers. However, if Apple had devastating fundamental patents that could completely lock Android out in the wilderness, wouldn't the company have raised those issues already? Absent a knockout blow, Apple's desire to rid the industry of Android increasingly looks like it won't happen.

5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

RIM tanks

RIM is at a precipice. Sales are down year over year. Management keeps insisting that it knows what it's doing. Unfortunately, co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis continue to disprove the point. With the next version of the BlackBerry operating system not due until the end of 2012, the company has become the turtle that decided to take a rest in its race against the hare in a twisted version of the Aesop fable.

RIM isn't going to recover from this. There aren't enough customers that care deeply about the company. Absent some major resolution on the part of investors, sales will continue to drop, free cash flow eventually will plummet, and there will be nothing to do but agree to a fire-sale acquisition.

5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

Yahoo continues to slide

Investors are tired of the performance of Yahoo (YHOO). Make that lack of performance. The company has lost its grip and doesn't have a sense of core identity. There's no permanent CEO at the moment, anyone who had a prayer of pulling Yahoo out of the mire likely has better things to do, and the board is the same one that has overseen Yahoo's decline.

Yahoo might sell off some or most of its Asian holdings in Alibaba or Yahoo Japan, but that doesn't replace the management team or board, and they'll all fight to stay in place. Figure that the company will dwindle in importance until someone buys it for the assets.

5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

HP avoids a new strategy

A lot of people didn't like former CEO Leo Apotheker, but at least he realized that HP (HPQ) needs to find a new strategy. Riding the old one had become a path to stagnation. However, any big change will scare investors, so no one at the top will take the necessary steps.

That's why it kept the PC business (no matter how low the margins get) and shunted mobile operating system webOS to the side. The company looks as though it will return to the path it never really left. That's why HP will miss riding the revolutionary changes in IT.

5 tech bah-humbugs for 2012

Blush comes off the social network rose

Social networks have seen a meteoric rise and mainstream acceptance. They will still grow in importance (a separate issue from the number of people using them), but more slowly, and people will become increasingly critical about them.

Revenue will become an even more difficult issue for the companies in the space. Facebook is trying to promote the need for advertising to its users. Maybe that has something to do with the lawsuit objecting to the use of user pictures in the so-called sponsored stories. Facebook is finding itself hit not just by privacy issues, but by the right of publicity that people have to control commercial use of their identities.

The eventual Facebook IPO will make many forget about those issues, but other services -- Twitter, Tumbler, Foursquare and Quora, to name a few -- will face that issue of generating revenue even more strongly. That could cause investors to rethink how much the social media scene is actually worth.