Technologically, the future has been with us for some time. Music can be listened to on the home PC, e-mails can be accessed via a mobile phone and the family can interact with the television instead of with each other. The obvious next step was for the companies that produce the content to link up with the companies that own the means of delivery, to exploit the new synergies.
But for most TMT (technology, media and telecoms) companies, 2002 was not the year when that vision became reality. Instead, it was the year of plummeting share prices and liquidity crises, management upheaval and volatile consumer demand.
