Highlights from the video:
1. Games look great on big screen TVs.
2. Phone applications on the rise
4. Flash chips
5. First wall computer
6. Carry-along PC (different from a netbook)
7. Long term evolution (wireless broadband)
and more.
Mark Anderson shares his technology predictions for 2009:
More Screen Time at Home
With consumer spending on entertainment slowing down, consumers will happily spend more to improve their at-home entertainment experience instead of splurging on outings to restaurants, movies, and weekend getaways. That means bigger TV screens to connect to video game consoles for family rounds of Rock Band on the Sony (SNE) Playstation 3, Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360, or Nintendo (7974.T) Wii. “People have been investing in bringing these screens into their homes for years, but very few of them are fully gamed up,” Anderson says. “So I think there will be a lot of spending by people to get extra entertainment mileage out of those screens at very low cost.”
Tight budgets also will foster the proliferation of free or low-cost mobile-phone applications. Case in point: Apple’s iPhone App Store on iTunes, where most applications are free—and those that aren’t usually sell for $10 or less. Consumers also can get cheap online software for Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and phones running the various mobile operating systems backed by Nokia (NOK), Microsoft, and Google (GOOG). “In terms of innovation and investment and purchase, phone applications are it for 2009,” Anderson says. “Apple has already made it clear, and it’s going to move out to other smartphones, and it’s going to be a huge market.”
Smartphones are not only going to be running more applications, they’ll also be capable of handling ever more complex tasks. Voice recognition will become both powerful, accurate, and common among mobile-phone applications, Anderson says. “After 150 years of waiting, we’ll get voice recognition everywhere,” he says. Such companies as Vlingo and Nuance (NUAN) will extend their technology into many applications. “By the end of the year, more than a third of mobile users will be using voice recognition without thinking about it,” Anderson says.
Personal Assistance
How will tiny cell phones handle all those new tasks? The short answer is they won’t. New tools called Internet assistants will help wireless devices send demanding computing tasks via the wireless Web to other computers or to servers—off in what’s known as “the cloud.” “Someone is going to design a personal assistant—by that I mean a suite of services, customized just for you, that exists on a server farm,” Anderson says. Mobile applications such as AroundMe on the iPhone are already pointing the way. “You already see concierge services that tell you, when you land in a foreign city, what the cultural events are in that city, and get tickets for them, and things like that,” he says.
Anderson says the assistant technology would combine with tools that track consumer preferences to know what you need, such as preferences when you travel, all triggered by short messages from the user saying something like “business trip, Los Angeles” or “family vacation Miami.” “You might have it rent you a midsize car when you travel alone on business, but when you’re traveling with the family it might rent a minivan,” he says. “You would say, give me a business visit, give me a fun visit, give me a family visit, and it would know what that means.” And it all could be done from your mobile phone.
Anderson is also predicting that the wireless industry will coalesce around a new standard known as LTE, or Long-Term Evolution, as it moves to develop faster wireless connections to the Internet.
Mobile PCs will continue to evolve, too, Anderson says. Netbooks, the popular new class of lightweight computers, will grow into an important market segment. “If you’re looking for growth rates, the strongest will be in this category, and it will be beyond debate,” he says. “Until now, it’s been debatable. Everyone will have one. The only question will be what color it is.”
While Times Square has that new LED ball for New Years, we’ve got a crystal ball telling us what to expect in the new year. Okay, you don’t actually need a crystal ball to predict some of the tech trends in 2009’s technology, which is fortunate for us. True, we here at TopTenREVIEWS can’t see the future … all the time … but we do have some predictions for the upcoming year. So look out for these events:
1. Goodbye GPS units*
2. Goodbye Plasma TVs*
3. Goodbye Kindle*
4. Smartphones become Smarteverythings
5. Inexpensive memory cards
6. Cloud computing will go from new concept to everyday tool (cirrusly)
7. Netbooks will be seen in more places than Twilight books were in 2008
8. Internet in the living room…and not necessarily on a computer
9. Blu-rays will saturate the market
10. Mobile everything with WiFi access and Bluetooth will be in every gadget in the home. Well, almost every gadget.
We know you’ll be disappointed (as we were) to find that lightsabers and personal hovercars didn’t make the list; but you never know, we could be completely wrong about that. Regardless, be ready for more big changes in the way you use technology in daily life.
*All these products were killed by the smartphone (Ok, maybe not plasma … but it was killed by LCD and smartphones have LCD screens and will likely someday kill LCD TVs, so it all works out in the end).
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