2010 - Tech Prediction

I’m joining the pundits. Here are my tech related predictions for 2010.

1. Apple will conquer a new market segment

Be it an iPad, subscription music, tv, ebook reader or something totally new, Apple will be conquering a new market segment in 2010. And everyone will once again come out and go "why didn't I think of that". The rest will change their game try to catch up.

2. Local/cloud combo apps will reach mainstream

I believe the "cloud computing" hype will tone down this year. What more and more people will realize, is that the best experience and approach is to have a good mixture of both local and cloud services. I recently started to use Evernote and I'm glad they have a locally installed version of the software as well as a good web-app. And I believe in 2010, more mainstream software will provide local + cloud solution.

3. The players will realize that the 'apps store' is only for Apple(‘s business model)

Apple's apps store for the iPhone and iPod Touch works mainly because the platform is closed. The number of hardware that developers have to take into consideration for the Apple App Store is extremely finite. Meanwhile, the competitors have no easy way of doing it, because of the vast versions and types of hardware that they make. Take Nokia for example. There are all sorts of screen size and hardware capability in their product range, event within the high end N or E series. As a result, the Nokia Ovi store is full of nothing for most people. Someone needs to fine a better approach. Otherwise, the Ovi Store or Android Market will just be irrelevant.

4. Google OS will get lukewarm acceptation by the public (non-tech people)

It’s another version of Linux. How dramatic can it be? Even on netbooks, most non-tech users will still want to use Windows. Not this year.

5. The one prominent (quasi-standard) video format will prevail

I honestly think (and hope) that this year, we will see a video format that will prevail as the de-facto video format for consumer, just like mp3 has become for audio.

6. Microsoft will actually become more prominent on the web front

This is the year, we will see Microsoft becoming more active on the web apps/services front if they want to stay competitive and relevant. I think Microsoft has been too quiet for too long.

7. Location based/aware services will see dramatic increase

The advancement in mobile computing technology and the ever expanding roll out of high speed wireless internet will create the demand for location based services. In fact, real time location base services might start to come out this year. We might see it during the FIFA World Cup in South Africa this year, where visitors to the match venue cities will create a demand for such services. Also, through in the social networking angle in there.

8. Normal phones and smartphones will be less distinguished

The line separating normal phones and smartphones will get very blurry this year. More mainstream phones will have features that are currently associated to smartphones. GPS, highspeed internet technology, email, social-network capability and video are features that will become a norm, in as least the middle level category of phones.