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It’s the end of the year and yes we all know what that means, it’s time for the top 10 tech predictions for 2010. Being a predominantly tech blog, this’ll be centred around the tech that I find relevant and believe will come true. A lot of these will be vague but hey, I would like to get some of these right, but some of these I’ll try to make specific and give my reasons behind them. So without further adieu, here are my predictions:

 

Android wins over iPhone

 

Many of you will know that I have been a dedicated iPhone user since it’s inception a few years ago. As much as i love this device and literally cannot go a day without it, I can’t see it’s dominance over the touchscreen smartphone market staying so strong for another year. With such high volume of sales this year with the 3GS as in previous years with older models of the Jesus phone, there will surely be a slowdown in sales. That and also, however brilliant the UI is on the iPhone, I think that consumers will be looking to use something new, something fresh and with that, I believe the Android OS stands the greatest chance of filling in the void. Already towards the end of the year, we’ve seen releases of the Droid and the Hero, both sporting very beautiful UI’s on them even if their hardware hasn’t come up to scratch with the iPhones. One other contender which may prove to be the dark horse in this ever growing Smartphone competition may come from the big guns of Microsoft, yes that is the Zune Phone. With all the mess that Windows Mobile has shown to be over it’s lifecycle, I can’t believe for a second that Microsoft would be happy to keep pushing their Mobile OS in the state that it is if they wish to seriously compete in the mobile market. So if the Zune phone does come to pass, note that the Zune HD has arguably one of the most beautiful UI’s of any MP3 player (and yes with that I say, it’s better than the iPod Touch) they could stand a chance at taking the title away from the iPhone as the best touchscreen smartphone of 2010.

 

3D TVs are all the rage

 

So this one isn’t exactly a total no-brainer but I’d definitely hedge my bets that at CES 2010 and other significant tech convention shows, we’ll see more and more 3D TVs. If anything, 2009 has been the year of the 3D movies with notable mention to Up and Avatar, I believe we’ll see more of these make their way onto our living room screens.  Now I’m not predicting that these will be any great success but don’t be surprised if your local Curry’s or PC World began displaying them on their shelves come the Summer and Autumn. As much of a gimmick this may have been in the 90’s, the technology has definitely come a long way, Mitsubishi have even completed prototype models of TVs where 3D can be displayed without the need of the funky glasses. This all in time for the World Cup in South Africa in the summer, I think we’ll see a huge emphasis on 3D sports viewing as much experimentation has been done on previous sports tournaments like the Rugby 6 Nations in 2009. On a bit of a side-note, I think we’ll see a lot more 3D involved with gaming both on the console and the PC side of things. Perhaps the beginning of PS3 and Xbox 360 3D games? That leads me nicely onto …

 

Next Gen Consoles whisperings begin

 

Many analysts have speculated that the current generation of gaming consoles will outlive their predecessors product lifetimes. With HD still being a relatively young technology and with the PS3 and Xbox 360 taking advantage of this, I don’t think we’ll see any major updates to these consoles just yet. Perhaps towards the end of the year we’ll start to see mentioning’s of an Xbox 720(?) or even a PS4 but with the current economic climate and with high demand for the current generation of games, I can’t see anything massive coming out from these two camps. On the Nintendo Wii side, there must be a new and improved version of the Wii to come out. They may have blown the competition away in terms of pure volume sales but without a serious improvement in graphics, gamers will soon start to turn away from the blurry pixels of so many Wii titles. Especially as HD becomes more standard in homes, the gap between the visual qualities of the Wii and other current generation consoles will begin to emerge and Nintendo surely can’t rely on trusty Zelda and Mario for another year.

 

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Tablet

 

There was big talk of Apple releasing an “iTablet” type device which never came true and was even flatly denied. Instead it was more the year of the eBook and netbooks that came true. I think with smart phones continuing its dominance over the mobile phone market, we’ll see more of a convergence with smart phones and netbooks and eReaders combining to form multi purpose tablets. The issue is, who really needs them? Sure they’re a luxury device that you can show off to all your pals and look decidedly like a mugging target as soon as you pull one out, but who genuinely needs them? In industry, I could think of engineers and architects which might but this is a very specific industry. Amongst general consumers, I could only see this selling well amongst students, if they were a low enough price point or if universities offered them as part of their course. That and possibly become an expensive household item whereby they function as both a core media centre device that controls all or just a pad from which your mum can access all her recipes from the kitchen top.

 

Personal Computers go hyperspeed

 

For 2010, I believe 64-bit systems will soon become standard as the amount of processing required just to run the latest OS’s these days will only go up and older computers will start to feel the drag. So where 2009 was the year where desktops went quad core and the laptops went dual core, 2010 will be the year where computers either go past 4 cores or start moving towards i7 type processor architectures. Soon we’ll see RAM where 4gigs starts to look slow and we move towards 6, 8, and even up to 12 gigs of RAM on laptops and desktops. We’ll see gaming on these devices start to reach PS3 potential and beyond. Who knows, we might even see a resurrection in PC only games compared to the dozens of console only titles seen in 2009. Fingers crossed.

 

Social Networking will get too big for it’s own good

 

The year 2009, was the year in which two big networks won out on top as the big guns of social networking, that is of course Twitter and Facebook. There’s been rumblings in the press that the founders of both these two networks are looking to expand their respective sites into something bigger than they already are. We already know that “The Social Network” a film based on the founders of Facebook will be released next year and that surely is overstepping the line. The problem with both of these networks is that for as many users as there are on both of them, they don’t make enough money solely on advertising and donations alone. Therefore expect one or both of these sites to make a bold move into further commercialising the business to the dismay of millions. At some points there will be advertising and a monetization model but let’s just hope that they do it the right way and don’t go the same way as MySpace. That said, niche networks will begin popping up such as Last.fm or FriendFeed and cover their ends of the Social Networking space. On that note, I also believe that this year will finally be the year where we see the death of MySpace. There have been plenty of talks suggesting that they may try to rebrand themselves as a Music discovery service and that may yet be true, but MySpace as a Social Network will be gone for good.

 

Major Mobile Platform Security Breach

 

Security was a fairly large issue in the tech community in 2009 with the first exploits to be found in the iPhone and the first mentions of mobile platform anti-virus software. That has been the first mentioning’s that operating systems as they’ve become more like their desktop counterparts, will start to exhibit the same negative consequences of having more exploits and loopholes on which to take advantage of. During Black Hat 2009, mobile device vulnerabilities took centre stage and I believe that’ll continue onto 2010 however even if we in the tech community will see it coming, I don’t think it’ll hit the major consumer markets until a major security threat is breached. That is until it becomes mainstream will companies such as Symantec (who already have developed mobile antivirus software) begin to market their security software. Conspiracy theorists will have already begun speculating that this is another attempt to deliberately create an atmosphere of fear and that the security companies will be the only ones who benefit but who knows for certain. What we do know is that as smart phones become more complex and more widespread, the probability of a major security breach grows.

 

Telecommunications costs gets slashed

 

This one’s a bit of a wildcard, but I think especially in the UK, many of the telecommunications companies will merge into a few major competitors all vying for our consumer money. O2 and one other major operator will probably merge. I think we’ll also see Voip begin to hit the mainstream such as Skype has and I think we’ll start to see handsets being released into the mainstream that come as Voip only handsets. There are a few receivers that do this and notably a few smartphones just as the iPhone do have apps which support Skype, but this could be the year where the public realise just how much of a rip off mobile tariffs are and that things are cheaper when done via the beauty of the internet.

 

Convergence of household technologies

 

We already have seen plenty of tech inside the household of the average person from more state of the art high-fi’s to LED screens on fridges. However i think this year will be the year where the automated house of the future will really begin to step up and hit the mainstream. What was a niche market within in-house central media centres I believe will become the “in” thing this coming year. More and more people will be wanting to connect all the rooms in their house in one central area. A control hub in the living room for example that would control the lighting, the sound, what goes on the television for example. We’ll see a lot more clever things such as screens being built into Bathroom mirrors for example, to check on the latest news headlines or the weather report as you’re brushing your teeth in the morning. We’ll see more and more technology focussed on making our lives that little bit easier, wireless charging for example will be a big deal, the ability to charge through the air for example. This such technology has made big steps in 2009 and will start to throw out the first mass produced products in 2010. And last but not least …

 

Google will rule the universe, birth of the Guerrilla resistance

 

With the speed at which Google has rolled over the competition in 2009, I think we’ll continue to see Google dominate in all areas of the internet come 2010. What first started off as jus a simple search engine and a window to the World Wide Web has now become a portal of services to which most of us rely on on a daily basis. What would we do without Gmail for example, or even Google Docs to which many companies have switched over to rely upon not to mention where would we all be without Google Maps, lost in the middle of the countryside asking the local farmyard animals for directions most probably. I think Google will begin to roll out more Cloud based services and really hammer out back up services on both the personal and enterprise levels. That and the Android will roll out on more and more devices and with the power of Open Source behind it, the world’s it’s oyster right now. Not forgetting of course that Chrome OS has yet to launch, and that’ll start to eat away at Microsoft and Linux’s domination over the Netbook market for the next 12 months or so. That said, I don’t believe that all companies will simply roll over or be swallowed up in mergers from the Google machine. Google hasn’t quite totally swallowed everything up, I believe Social Networking is an area which they’ll look to get into, if even for the advertising money. Possible targets maybe Twitter or Facebook?

 

So those were my Top 10 predictions for 2010 .. What do you think? Agree with me? Or think I’ve gone bonkers. Either way, leave a comment, be interested to know what you all think =]