What's happened to Australia? Change is in the air. Word from South Australian brewers Coopers suggests our love of tap beer is on the wane, Channel Ten may not be long for this world as an ASX-listed business, and multinational corporations are paying almost no tax.
Okay, that last one mightn't be too new — it's been going on for years.
But there does seem to be a perceptible shift in the habits of Australian consumers. After a few decades of predictable buyer behaviour, we're now branching out in new ways — and leaving some of our old ways behind.
Craft beer, YouTube, Uber (the new crowd-sourced taxi service) and online shopping from overseas retailers are now commonplace. So much so on the latter, that Australia Post is getting in on the international shipping act by providing a US postal address to shoppers (some US retailers will only ship to US addresses).
None of this is breaking news. Many of you reading will be tempted to wonder if I've been hiding under a rock. I haven't — I've been using a US postage redirection service for years, am a huge fan of YouTube and used Uber for the first time recently. (I'm not a convert to craft beer, though… yet).
Same, same but different
I don't mention these things as a technology writer or social commentator, but as an investment adviser. When it comes to businesses — and business models — I'm not sure there's been such a fractious environment this side of the industrial revolution (perhaps save for the introduction of distributed electricity).
Technologies, markets and consumer preferences are changing — in many areas — at a rate of knots. In others, they're hardly changing at all. And for investors, knowing the difference is vital.
Believe it or not, Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) has just announced that its office suite (and veritable cash cow) is going to be made free on mobile devices, such is its concern about the march of free office productivity options such as Google Docs. Microsoft Office was once untouchable as the king of workplace software, but that's no longer a guarantee.
Free-to-air television is being assaulted on all sides by a combination of Pay TV, YouTube and the immediacy of online news, even in text form. Netflix is rumoured to be arriving in Australia soon, and media outlets are (related or not) scrambling to create streaming partnerships to distribute their content online.
There will be many, many companies that continue to do what they've always done — today's hammers, for example, look decidedly similar to those of 50 or 100 years ago — while other companies and whole industries will be barely recognisable in a dozen years.
Losers and winners
Fairfax Media (ASX:FXJ) has acknowledged its future is digital. Ten Network (ASX: TEN) has effectively put itself up for sale. Yet there'll still be those, like Flight Centre (ASX:FLT) who manage to buck a trend that many — including your correspondent — thought it'd be swept away by.
Those who fail to learn from history may well be doomed to repeat it, but then, as Warren Buffett has noted, "If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians."
Foolish takeaway
Investing can never be done through the rear view mirror. Investors need to know which companies can keep on with business as usual and which can't. And the former list is much, much smaller than you'd think — just ask the taxi companies who'd have thought 'how can someone else disrupt the entire taxi industry, including replacing an entire fleet'. The putative answer — as we now know — is Uber.
To steal the title of Intel CEO Andy Grove's book, only the paranoid survive. And if you — and the companies whose shares you own — aren't just a little bit paranoid, you'd better be careful.
