Tech firm? I don’t think so!

The convergence of the Internet and mobility has made technology pervasive. So much so that many companies want to be seen as a 'tech player'. This is causing some confusion for the market in terms of what is the core business of the company in question.

On the face of it Facebook and Google are technology companies as are the online banks. Except they are not.

These companies are information companies that happen to use technology to acquire, manage and exploit that information. You could argue Google is a technology player because it has developed its own operating system and browser. But these technologies were developed to secure a bigger slice of the information market.

The key definition of a technology company is one whose core business is to develop / resell technologies with profit in mind.

So Accenture is a tech company as is Oracle, HP and Cisco.

I flag this because there is an increasing trend for end-user CEOs to state they are technology players and thus misunderstand what business they are actually in. This in turn confuses the market and is destructive from a value perspective.

And most tech start ups are not tech start ups.