All this is fed into massive spreadsheets. Analysts like to shift categories to make old (wrong) predictions seem closer to the mark. Take something like suntan lotion - they'll look at when people use suntan lotion, how fast the holiday market...
Events that disrupt international travel, such as the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS) that has curtailed visits to and from Asia, are another wild card. Law firm Shaw Pittman has brought on business consultants to help it advise...
For example, Microsoft has been developing technology, codenamed Janus, that paves the way for a new class of portable music devices capable of playing music that is rented on a subscription basis rather than purchased.
Lipsy MD Jeremy Stakol told silicon.com the company used to track its supply chain with a series of Excel spreadsheets but with business growing by 20 per cent every year, the management was finding it hard to keep control of the supply chain.
The DOS operating system was bought in by Microsoft, Windows was based on ideas from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center already implemented by Apple, word processing was well established before Word, spreadsheets were popular before Excel and so on.
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