I thought I'd kickstart the end-of-year-prediction-writing season with my own wacky technology predictions for the next 6 months.
 
1. The ASUS Eee laptop is going to sell like hotcakes over the holiday season and other manufacturers will soon follow suit in creating light, barebones, home-use laptops.
Its 2 pounds of weight, small form factor, integrated camera, wifi, few moving parts (read: it's durable), decent battery life, and $400 price tag all spell good news for Asus's home-use ultraportable. It's not a Windows PC, instead it provides users with a suite of basic browsing, messaging and productivity applications over a dumbed-down version of Linux. The word on the street is the preinstalled install is fantastic, although you can install XP on it if you want to. Reviews have been very positive. I think I'll be picking one of these up. (2 months)
 
2. Apple will announce a digital camera with integrated video recording and wifi, and seamless YouTube video upload functionality.
Now before you call me crazy, remember that Apple is now a consumer electronics company. What does everyone want and not have? A way to effortlessly get their videos from their digital camera immediately up on the web. Apple's recent collaboration with Google on the iPhone underscores a relationship that I think will continue. (6 months)
 
3. RIM will release a 3G Blackberry and the Curve will prove to have been a huge success.
This will help Blackberry sales in Europe where 3G has more widespread use and availability than in the US. I also predict that Blackberry's balance sheet will show that the Curve has been a huge success. (3 months)
 
4. PS3 will outsell the XBox360 in the US.
Granted, this has already happened in Europe and, of course, Japan, but here in the US the PS3 has finally found its sweetspot — a lower price and a great new advertising campaign. With every firmware update the platform also keeps getting better and better (read about the recent decision to add local and network play of DivX files - this is huge), and Sony's take on a SecondLife-like virtual meeting place for gamers, Home, promises big time. Couple all that with a slew of games from exclusive franchises coming out in the next 6 months and you've finally got a winner. (5 months)
 
5. The Wii will outsell all other game consoles, but the number of game sales per owner will be significantly lower than on other platforms.
Why? Demographics: the Wii is a disruptive platform that has successfully found a new market of gamers. Still, many of those users are not hardcore gamers and do not spend as much time on the Wii as other players on other systems. Those users will be content with a handful of decent games to play on social occasions. (3 months)
 
6. 24 inch widescreen monitors will hit the mainstream and soon thereafter will become the norm.
Quick on the heels of 22 inch monitors, the price of 24 inch LCD monitors will come down below $300 and people will begin to look at this monitor size as the size of choice. (5 months)
 
7. Cellular providers will start to offer cell-phone Internet plans with VOIP.
It's like what happened to the music business with mp3s — there is just so much pressure on them to open their services up to VOIP that it's simply inevitable. The first provider to cave in will be Sprint. (4 months)
 
8. Google will embrace OpenID and it will finally take off.
For those not in the know, OpenID is an open effort to create a multiplatform sign-in solution for users. That means create an account in one place and use it on many sites. Sounds great to me. Todd wrote about it a while back too. Google is looking to regain some of the goodwill it's lost over the last year. Much like its involvement in creating an app platform with OpenSocial , it will embrace OpenID in the same way. Unlike OpenSocial though, OpenID already has a small following (if you call AOL, LiveJournal, Technorati, Wordpress and Vox small). Google will resist the Microsoft-like urge to copy the OpenID idea and pull together a competing platform and will instead join, support and improve on OpenID. (3 months)
 
9. The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps will start collaborating and the price of Bu-Ray and HD-DVD media will be sub-$20.
Blu-Ray definitely had the edge, but with el-cheapo HD-DVD players available over the holiday season and Paramount's exclusive HD-DVD deal, HD-DVD will still remain very much alive. This will force both camps to consider working together. In the end, this is the only thing that really makes sense. Sony's CEO made comments recently that allude to this being more than just a possibility. As far as media prices go, you can currently get a Blu-Ray movie on Amazon for about $24. For some reason Best Buy et al are still selling these at $30 or more. I'm thinking $18.99 is the sweet spot and that we'll hit that in the not too distant future. (6 months)
 
There you have it, my wacky predictions for the coming first part of the year. What do you think?

Disclaimer: these predictions are based purely on my hunches and accumulation of publicly available knowledge, not on insider information or any other type of institutional knowledge. Full disclosure: RIM is an ImpactWatch client.

| Trackback URL |