Fixing everything, really slowly

I’ve read so many of these now it feels like I’m cheating and, but I’ll do it anyway!
Sadly I’ve not done predictions before, so I can’t share with you how wrong I was last year.
Hopefully this will be entertaining in some other, as yet undermined, way.

Google Chrome will overtake Firefox in browser market share

Many of the users that hated IE and switched to Firefox will switch to Chrome. They will then do the same on their parents and grandparents computers. By next Christmas Chrome will overtake Firefox and will start to eat into IE’s market share too.

Reasons for change will be: Stability, transparent updates (no nagging), ease of use (especially for the older generations)

Wave goodbye: relic of the IT industry

Dispite all the wizzy demos, Google Wave solves a problem most people don’t have (or don’t know they have). The effort of switching to Wave outweighs the benefits.

Remeber Microsoft Bob? Wave will die, but unlike Bob we will see it copied elsewhere, and soon. It will be viewed as a grand proof of concept of what social networks can become. Facebook and maybe twitter will borrow some of the better ideas and Google themselves may integrate Wave into some of their existing communities (YouTube? Orkut?).

Tablets and Google Chrome OS will not take off in 2010

Tablets remind me of the … oh yeah Tablet PC. I just don’t see what has changed that makes this a viable platform. People don’t like voice or handwriting recognition, they don’t much like onsreen keyboards either. I’m not sure even Apple’s hype machine will get people excited about this form factor for it to take off.

Phones will continue to stay small and get more powerful. Laptops will get cheaper and more portable. Tablets will be squeezed into an ever decreasing gap.

Chrome OS looks really, really good, but I’m not sure it will become popular this year either. For one the device will be seen as almost useless without internet connection. No Chrome OS will need more time, and it won’t sell many Tablets.

People who read blogs rather than a daily newspaper might like one of these, but they will probably carry on using their laptop and “wait till the get cheaper”.

Google will get further into the music business.

As a music fan I’ve realised google sucks for music. It’s one of the few things I don’t search for much directly (I use last.fm or discogs.com or spotify). Google will address this firstly by rolling out their music search previews internationally leveraging their partners (which rather interestingly includes LaLa whom Apple recently acquired), then maybe by aquiring or developing an iTunes-like desktop media player/library.

I suspect they are as frustrated by the lawyer run music industry as consumers are (don’t you just love it when spotify has the track, but it can’t be played in your country). I suspect they are as frustrated by the music industry as they are with the telco industry and regulators.Till now they have stayed out of music sales and out of mp3’s and devices. Now with Android they have a bit of a gap.

Apple has iTunes, iTunes music store and the iPod/iPhone. Amazon has a direct store and their store is integrated into doubletwist and songbird both of which sync your music to lots of devices. Napster is integrated into Windows Media Player which syncs many devices. Spotify Mobile lets you play music on iPhones and Android mobiles.

Google just has an okish mp3 player on Android phones, and little ecosystem: no desktop player, no means of syncing devices. In one way it’s a nice situation for consumers since there is none of the lock-in of the iTunes/iPod world (which is what happens when you let lawyers design technology), but its not straightforward enough for people to plug in their phones and sync music to them.

Google has in the past bought companies to bridge gaps in their offerings. Picasa filled a similar sized gap when google bought them a few years back, letting you pull photo’s off your device and onto the internet.

If Picassa is Googles answer to iPhoto where is there answer to iTunes?

The iTunes/iTunes Music Store/iPod/iPhone dominance will begin to decline.

Competition and consumer awareness will force Apple to adapt and it will no longer set the pace in this area. More consumers will realise how restrictive iTunes is start using other music library tools.

The iTunes Music Store will be forced to lower prices further and will launch a stand alone website where users can buy music without iTunes. The new iTunes store will offer full track streaming audio like spotify does, but probably only for tracks you have purchased or a monthly subscription – no ads. Users will stop buying iPods by default and instead use a wider range of devices to play music, especially mobile phones. This diversification and openness will benefit everyone and Apple will remain a major player albeit not always leading the industry.

The other iTunes store products like movies and mobile applications will prove less sticky and users will get this content from other providers. Movies and TV shows will begin to be sold direct from the studios, applications will be downloaded directly to phones without centralised control (like Android does).

Android (google’s open source mobile phone operating system) will become the #1 mobile operating system

The sheer number of vendors selling Android devices will drive the platform to a leading position. Several vendors (Motorola?) will go Android-only for their high end phones, saving on development costs by using the free and open source platform. Nokia will continue to do it’s own thing and struggle to compete as a result.

Low cost Android phones will appear as free upgrades to many people on phone contracts. This new audience will get the app bug and a whole new wave of useless fart applications will flood the Android store.

Interesting apps will then start to be released/updated on Android first and then ported to iPhone, Blackberry etc later.

As the Android open source project gains momentum more ‘distributions’ of Android will emerge. Some will come from the vendors who will lump extra crap on top of the stock OS (HTC Sense is an early example of this). This will mirror the situation of buying Windows laptops where vendors “add value” by installing the Yahoo toolbar. The Android technical community will continue to produce lightweight distributions which run faster than the stock OS and these will become well known (like linux distributions are today) in the technical community.

Ultimately consumers will want less crap on their phones, but only the geeks and power users will care enough this year to change their phone’s OS and the rapid acceleration in mobile CPUs will mask the worse effects at the expense of battery life.

Argumented Reality (AR) won’t take off, local search will.

I read much hype about AR, but it won’t be used much. It’s fun to play with for 5 minutes, but it doesn’t really help you find stuff.

Instead I think Google maps (and the decent copies of it) will be what people use. Because it works well and you can see where stuff is. One or more popular mobile searches like “pizza”, “bar” or “toilet” will be in the top ten overall searches of 2010.

Apple will begin to be viewed in the same light as Microsoft (i.e. disliked)

Come on! Bundling everything including a browser and music/movie/TV/application shop with the OS? Isn’t this way worse than what the US and EU sued Microsoft over? Expensive hardware. Lock in. Desktops, laptops and mp3 players that only work with their stuff.

Why do we tolerate this? It looks nice. It works (mostly).

I can’t see this goodwill lasting (and I use a MacBook and an iPod).

A new popular TV series will be distributed solely on-line

The Wire, Lost, The Sopranos, 24 … these are stronger brands than most TV stations and music/media stores. With social networks it is now possible to promote a new show very cheaply and effectively. It will take a brave studio or production company and some genuinely good content and then we can begin to take out the middlemen. This will start to end the nonsense which is geographically staggered releases and 40 minutes of good TV interrupted every 10 mins with loud adverts selling crap I don’t need.

Heck people are already downloading stuff on bittorrent just to see it before its on TV and then they go out and buy the box set. We citizens are good people who would like to give money to creative people who make good content!

Update: I made a mistake in my original post about who bought LaLa the music streaming company. I said it was Google that bought the company, but it was in fact Apple. Google partner with LaLa among others for their US-only music-streaming-search. I guess this a partnership which might not last given the souring relationship between Apple and Google.