Yes, it will be a better year, especially for consumers, overseas telecoms, and China — which will become ever-more important In 2003, the tech industry hit bottom and bumped through yet another bad year. Microsoft’s (MSFT ) legal woes continued as a new wave of legal disputes hit the software giant. Big corporations kept their wallets largely closed to new tech spending even though their profits and margins rose smartly as the year progressed. Database king Oracle (ORCL ) had another subpar year as new licenses for its products kept falling. And a series of worms and viruses — most notably the Slammer worm — crippled large swathes of Corporate America for days on end. Spammers ruled the e-mail queues as their often-offensive missives eclipsed 50% of all e-mail traffic at big Internet service providers such as America Online (TWX ). Unemployment in many key tech trades hovered around 7%, the highest level in decades and a harbinger of massive tech outsourcing that’s rapidly shipping coveted white-collar programming and other tech jobs to low-wage but high-skilled workers in India, China, and Eastern Europe. So what does all this mean for 2004? Fortunately, it looks like the coming year could actually be a lot better, finally. Here are several trends to watch that’ll go a long way toward making that so, for both the tech industry and its corporate and consumer users. Full Story