Ballmer Predicts The Death Of Newspapers….Huh?

Steve Ballmer has done it again. This time he opened his mouth and has predicted that newspapers will be dead within 10 years:

There will be no media consumption left in ten 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.”

I suppose there’s some amount of truth to that. I haven’t had a newspaper subscription in 10 years. I don’t know many people under the age of 40 who do as well. So maybe print newspapers will dead, but they will still exist on line. Still, I think he’s smoking crack mistaken when he makes this comment:

If Newsweek is around in five years, I’ll buy you dinner.”

Trust me about two things:

  1. Newsweek will be around in five years.
  2. He’s going to be buying someone dinner.

What Ballmer is missing is that the delivery method will change, but that doesn’t mean that the death of the organizations that deliver the content to you will die. Though it may mean that the less healthy organizations may disappear.

Of course this comes from Steve Ballmer. Someone who doesn’t have a great track record of predicting the future (Zune, MSN, WebTV just to name a few). So keep that in mind when you he says anything about the future.

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