Tech boosters say the next huge innovation is sure to lead to another boom. As always, we'll recover and be back on the growth curve again. But whether the tech industry will pack the same economic wallop is in doubt. I don't think we'll ever see the same strong growth. Pioneering companies launch new technologies.
Rivals flood the market and set off fierce competition.
Manufacturing moves abroad to cut costs. Smart manufacturers triumph, and weak ones fail. Industry growth wanes. That's happening now in the PC and chip sectors, says economist Jeremy Greenwood at the University of Rochester in New York. The integrated circuit's creation in the 1960s spawned a wave of electronic goods, including the PC, which uses about half of all semiconductors made.