My predictions for 2009 were about two-thirds right. Will I do any better this year?
• Charles Arthur’s results for 2009
It’s prediction time again! Yes, I know that January is half-over already, but that gives me less time to make it all happen, doesn’t it?
And remember, fully two-thirds of these should be correct, going by past performance. Although please remember that your home may be at risk if you bet it on any single one of these things happening.
So without further ado, let’s get under way …
Apple
1) Apple will launch a tablet computer. The drumbeats and careful leaks all point to it happening, in only a few days’ time. What, you want more? Oh, all right: a multitouch interface that uses a 3D paradigm (as per the patent revealed recently). And in some models has mobile connectivity, like a big iPhone.
2) Apple will sell 5m tablets in the first nine months or so. (It sold 4m iPhone in its first six months in 2007.)
3) No viruses or self-replicating worms will be discovered that affect Mac OS X. Still a banker of a prediction, year after year.
4) Steve Jobs will remain as chief executive of Apple through to 2011.
5) Apple will not release a netbook. It doesn’t need to – the tablet will do the job.
Microsoft
6) Windows Mobile’s share of the smartphone market, as measured by Canalsys, will continue to fall, while Apple, RIM and Palm grow theirs.
7) Steve Ballmer will continue as chief executive of Microsoft through to 2011, but shareholder pressure will grow as the company’s revenue growth fails to match that of rivals.
Internet Explorer, having been revealed as the avenue for far too many hacker attacks, will continue to lose market share to Firefox and especially Google’s much-advertised Chrome browser.
Google
9) The Chrome operating system for netbooks will be advertised on the basis that, among other things, “you don’t need virus protection” (because the OS and apps can’t be changed, except by Google itself).
10) Google’s market share will continue growing in the US and Europe, prompting privacy investigations
11) More devices will be sold that run the Android operating system than the Windows Mobile. (This will be tricky to measure because Microsoft has recently become all shy about announcing sales figures for Windows Mobile, at just the time that Apple leapfrogged it with the iPhone.)
12) Eric Schmidt will not remain as chief executive of Google through to 2011, though he will probably stay as chairman.
Computing
We now have hard drives that can hold more data than we can ever create, and computers that can process faster than we can generally find use for. What we don’t have is really long battery life and really light machines, except at a premium. So there’s a market to go for …
13) Three of the big computer makers (for example HP, Dell and Apple) will begin to offer solid state (Flash) hard drives for a growing number of their laptops, with SSDs becoming the primary option for some by the end of the year. (I’m not including the MacBook Air, which has an SSD as standard.) SSD prices are dropping fast: you sacrifice some storage capacity, but gain battery life and a lighter machine.
14) OLED screens will become a build-to-order option on laptops from major manufacturers (probably starting with Sony, Acer or Asus): they’re brighter than LED-based ones.
15) On Apple’s lead, more companies will tout their tablet (more precisely, keyboardless “slate”) computers – but won’t see anything like its sales, despite Windows 7′s multitouch abilities.
Ebooks
16) Despite all the excitement at CES about ebooks and ereaders, and the subsequent excitement about Apple’s iTablet, they won’t show much growth in revenues compared to 2009. Free ebooks are fine, but they’re just a sop to people who have ereaders and consequently no cash left.
17) Copyright, and particularly file compatibility arguments, will continue to dog ereaders and ebooks, while the popularity of physical books will grow: more physical books will be sold in the UK in 2010 than 2009.
Government
18) The Digital Britain bill will fall as the election (in May?) intervenes and kills off legislation in progress.
19) The freeing of Ordnance Survey map data (in April) will see rival companies vying to produce paper maps specialised for various niches such as ramblers and climbers, and an explosion in websites that mash all sorts of government content against maps.
20) If elected, the Tories will also back the freeing of Ordnance Survey data (rather than privatising it) and of other government data.
Hackers and hacking
The Chinese attacks on Google and other high-profile US companies have put a strong spotlight on web security.
21) The use of Microsoft Windows in security-critical organisations will be seriously questioned. Although the developers of many of the high-profile companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter use Linux or Mac OS X, there is still a notable security hole in the people in those organisations who use Windows – for example, in lower-profile areas such as accounting and finance. What’s the cost of switching from Windows? And what’s the cost of losing your source code through a hole in Windows? For a growing number of companies, the first number will become smaller than the latter. And what did those adverts for Google Chrome OS say?
22) Suddenly, encrypted email will start to look like a good idea. It might be time to investigate GPG, the freeware encryption system.
23) Hackers will resort to DNS poisoning (already used in some situations) as a corollary to phishing, because you’re directed to sites that look like they have the correct URL (such as paypal.com) but are in fact fakes.
Broadband and video
24) The demand for data through the BBC’s iPlayer will make ISPs complain again about the strain on their networks. (Isn’t it odd how that complaint went away, though demand went up?) Even so, iPlayer use will show a rising (if not exponential) growth. As a consequence, ISPs still won’t offer truly unlimited broadband packages.
25) 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray will arrive and will be wildly popular among early adopters. Other people, who can’t afford to upgrade their TV every two years, will sniff that they “still like their old DVD, thanks very much” while secretly coveting the new stuff.
26) The government consultation on how to encourage the building of next-generation broadband will generally get the response that government ought to encourage “outside-in” construction – putting fast broadband in the far-flung places where it would never arrive if the market ruled. That’s because those are the people who generally suffer the most from high transport costs when travelling to work.
Being social
27) Facebook’s growth will level off in the western world. There’s only so many people you can encourage to poke and friend you.
28) Twitter will start making money – not just through searches (it charges Google and Bing), but also through charging companies for various sorts of access to its network and data.
29) AOL will sell Bebo and/or News Corporation will sell MySpace; in either or both cases, at a substantial loss.
And finally …
30) Mobile phones with geolocation/GPS will comprise 5% of those sold in the UK. Ambitious, but we can hope.
There you go. Let’s meet again to evaluate them on 7 January 2011. And what have I missed? Tell me in the comments.
