Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Stunning New Year Predictions

Quick and to the point!

- Blackberry will continue to lose market share due to many reasons - catastrophic service outages that illustrate a fundamental flaw with their intrastructure and conceptualization of how messaging should work in 2011. Plus their devices are not sexy.

- Android will continue to make gains. Look for focus on better, uniform user experiences across devices. Also - it will begin to show up on things other than phones and tablets. There are already two Android based handheld game systems out there - more to come. How can Google capitalize on this?

- The fight for free cloud storage mindshare will hit a fever pitch with Google landing in the middle of it all.

- There will be more interest in fully on-line high schools for under served areas, but also to alleviate class crowding and shrinking funds.

- Google will continue to plug away at Google TV. It may show up on more new sets this summer, but it will be this extra thing that consumers ignore until there is a compelling reason for it to exist; ie content and a really sexy way to discover content, and merge that seamlessly with the current "real-time/time-shift" broadcast TV experience, blurring the line between the two.

- 3D video cameras will dramatically drop in price, but it will be a while before 3D TV's will as well. Nintendo has it right with the 3DS - the experience needs to happen without glasses before it goes from novelty to something that we would use all the time.

- Apple may or may not come out with a TV set. If they do, re-read that last paragraph. They will successfully integrate their iTunes storefront with the ability to timeshift Television - all through a consistent interface - which will support Siri for program searching with intelligence. And Apple will have the App store for the AppleTV, which can include advertising supported content, just like it does with Apps for the iPad and iPhone.


- Apple will introduce a new tablet in the spring. There will still be only one basic model as before - with more ram, wifi or wifi and celluar. It will be a little thinner and lighter, but will also have a higher resolution and slightly larger screen.

- Amazon will sell a lot of Fire's. A lot. Books, Magazines, Video - ie content. What Google doesn't have.

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