Although current income has been a recent key driver of stock returns of cash-rich companies and has generated more certainty for investors, growth in earnings is much more variable and uncertain.
Over the next decade or so, the information-technology revolution is widely seen as being the main driver of growth, and since the rich economies, notably America, have a vast lead in the development and use of computers, telecoms and the Internet, some people worry that this will inevitably cause the gap between the developed and the developing worlds to widen further.
Storing this information and utilizing connections between the different pieces of information is an important driver of the modern information economy and a rich prospect for hardware and software providers that serve this market.