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Twitter goes bankrupt because they can't find a business model.
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Microsoft positions themself for a major comeback in the industry.
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Jason Calacanis' tech events business continues to cut the bleeding edge with the addition of Kurt Daradics aka @KurtyD to Jason's team of triple threat specialists!~
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1. Macs diversify into uncharted territory ( large ipod touch and/or additional displays on MBp)
2. cell phone cameras will stay with 5 to 8 mp range with better optics.
3. convergence of mobile, desk pc's ( docking or umpc linkage )
4. Streaming live itunes.
5. Netbooks rule a certain demographic and get better and faster and stay in the $400-$600 range.
6. Pownce clones merge into one big cool web tool. alla twitter with more oomph!
7. tech from india, ireland, france, russia, southamerica finally gets noticed as good, period.
8. More hybrid/electric cars and companies pop up from all over the world.
Source(s):
engadget, ars technica, rocketboom, digg, NYT, BBC, Reuters, Make, TUAW, worldchanging,

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We'll start seeing products advertised for Whitespace, but Google/Microsoft won't actually get it together until 2010.

On that note, more municipalities will announce free wireless internet services, on anticipation of Whitespace, trying to make it look like they were responsible. But we'll probably be seeing a whole lot more of it the next year, which is an election year for some offices.

More and more phones will be smartphones, until even pay-per-use services offer a tier for smartphones.

All-in-one computers will gain ground on laptops, and traditional desktops will lose ground to both as more computers and media boxes make the need for a desktop redundant.

Nintendo will realize that if they just supply stores steadily with Wiis, they'll sell more of them, instead of black market sellers making a killing.

The I Want Sandy replacement will be up and running, and Rael Dornfest will wish he hadn't gone to Twitter when they keep slipping.

Breakthroughs will introduce LCD TVs with no motion blurring or restricted angle viewing.

We'll start hearing about new hearing problems caused by Bluetooth headsets.

There will be Opensource software that you can download to remotely control X-10 smart devices on your appliances.

The Whitehouse will have an active blog/newsletter/forums that everyone gets, whether they want it or not.
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1 - Tech will tread water in the beginning of '09 due to sluggish economy
2 - CES and Macworld Expo will have some interesting things, but nothing big.
3 - Sales will pick up a little in the spring as economy improves with an "Obama Bounce"
4 - Late summer/early Fall - Apple will announce something big and new in the home entertainment / music space.
5 - Sony will drop Blu Ray machine pricing like a rock to jump-start the sale of players.
6 - If Obama wants a "Tech Czar", he should appoint Jeff Bezos, to help government give people as good of a customer service experience as Amazon does.
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Top 9 Tech Predictions for 2009
1. Twitter Advertisements/Photos will come as new features and products
2. Microsoft, Disney, or NBC will buy Yahoo
3. iPhone applications will continue to thrive
4. Online videos will gain more popularity for companies
5. Newspapers will merge and find online outlets to survive
6. Online and video gaming will take an even larger tech presence
7. Tech companies will be bought out in increasing numbers and only the strong, strategical companies will survive
8. Apple will invent a new laptop or flat screen technology
9. Facebook will roll out a tech product
Source(s):
Futuristic awesomeness. You can also find and contact me at http://www.greatgroupgames.com.

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Tech Prediction - Google Android on a Netbook
One of the major "Cloud" companies will have a significant outage, causing data loss / lack of availability and a panic by some consumers.
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1)Yahoo will sell itself :) not to Google or Microsoft but to another major brand that want to be established as a promising web 2.0 new player
2)Twitter will be multilingual and also will have features like, tags,groups,search posts etc
3)Apple will announce a new mac-netbook with an i-pod type touch screen
4)Google browser will be available for linux
5)Music as a service will be the main music selling channel
6)It will be easy to move our social profiles between competitive social-networking platforms
7) Samsung, LG,HTC, Nokia or Blackberry will have an iphone killer but 1 month later Apple will announce iphone 3.0 with the missing features that will make it, a perfect smart phone, an excellent ipod and a very competitive portable game machine.
8) Virtual machines will gain share due to the recession
9) The new marketing trend, in hardware manufacturers will be the "eco-friendly pc"
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1: Steve Jobs Retires.
2: Apple Releases their version of a Netbook (Bigger iPod Touch - NOT Cheap.)
3: Windows 7 improves on Vista, but fails to impress.
4: Snow Leopard shows few new features, but is a speed demon. (Cuts boot time in half)
5: Microsoft releases a Zune Phone that is half-way decent.
6: Google's Android OS Flat-Lines. Cell Carriers stop carrying/subsidizing Android phones because of Rogue Apps that misuse their data networks.
7: Quad Core becomes Main-Stream in High-End Notebooks. (Except Regular MacBooks)
8: Apple begins to sell Books and Newspaper Subscriptions in iTunes to compete with Kindle.
9: Google Chrome begins to take serious chunks of Firefox's Market Share.
10: Linux's market share will remain about the same. Netbooks will largely run Windows XP or maybe Windows 7.
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GM, Ford and Chrysler - give up on making cars and instead diversify starting with the purchase of Twitter. By the time summer arrives a cheaper imported version of Twitter will emerge crushing them again.
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1. Apple iPhone application Sales reach $1 Billion
2 Android application sales reach $500 Million
3. Steve Jobs serves another year at Apple despite the Scoble intrusions
4 Dell goes bankrupt
5 Sun Microsystems gets acquired
6 Android Mobile Operator deployments reach double what iPhone does among Mobile Operators for 2009.
7 Worldwide mobile device numbers reach 4 billion
8 Microsoft lays off 25% of workforce
9 Zune recall issued
10 Yahoo gets acquired by a company
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1. Hell will freeze over and bi-directional CableCard tech will finally be implemented in both equipment and at the cable headends of Comcast, Charter, and TimeWarner.
2. The Obama Weekly YouTube addresses will slow down to at least bi-weekly.
3. Windows 7, which was initially rumored to be released in late 2009, will actually be released in late 2009.
4. Steve Jobs will leave Apple in a similar way to how Bill Gates left Microsoft: no longer officially in charge, but still a chairman.
5. 4 TB drives will be available to consumers.
6. OpenCL will result in an explosion of (relatively-)low-cost Apple-based clusters.
7. 802.11n will be finalized and be compatible with draft-n, but not pre-n, equipment.
8. The Amazon MP3 store will gain downloaded music market share to the tune of 15% as a result of a new interface.
9. Aptera Motors will begin releasing the 2h to pre-paying customers in a manner similar to Tesla: slowly but surely.
10. Motorola will cease mobile phone production.
Source(s):
Prescience.

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Predictions for 2009
1. With Semantic Web gaining popularity with applications like OpenCalais, Twine and search like Powerset, we will see a flood of application in Semantic Web area. Most of the application would be in research phase but geeks would be early adopters of those and pave way for mainstream applications. Good semantic web apps would be available by 2011 only.
2. Microsoft's new Windows 7 will help regain the MS authority. With Vista going wrong and 'failure' of advertising campaign the best solution would be to show the world what they are good at.
3. Google's android will gain more popularity and we will see a new set of mobile from wide manufacturers participating in it. Soon, we will have a multi touch phone and a true competitor to iPhone.
4. Apple will jump into the field of Netbooks, we will see a variety of MBA style netbooks from apple. Apple market share in computer market will grow at much higher rate.
5. Twitter will still be struggling to find a business model for them but definitely it would have gone mainstream with exponential rise in users. Twitter will introduce 'groups' for everyone (currently in Japan only).
6. Yahoo would still be in bad waters. Even though they have the best semantic web app (Search Monkey, source : ReadWriteWeb) and other apps doing well, they dont have the proper business model. Yang would be leaving and Flickr/Del.icio.us still hasn't started making money. Yahoo will come up with more and better products but still would be struggling catching up with Google. Expect a good semantic web application from Yahoo.
7. Facebook platform will develop more and we will see better application development which will not just include the entertainment factor. We will also see a much better usage of Facebook Connect program and it will gain popularity over open ID.
8. Market will be flooded with the series of Netbook from most manufacturers. It has been proven that Netbook will be the future for power users and the idea is catching up to mainstream.
9. Microsoft will launch Zune Phone in competition with Apple and Google. It would be having the same Windows Mobile platform but the device will be completely different from current devices.
10. We will see more adoptions of SAAS and SOA approach by the enterprises. Even with developer’s love for PHP, ROR and other similar scripting language will grow enterprises would still more money into SAAS model.
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1. Microsoft will continue to lose business market share thanks to factors like less superior products lines to Apple Inc.

2. Space tourism will gain greater infrastructure.

3. Greener running cars will continue to greater populate the American automaker industry.

4. A new free online social network will be built which is better than all those currently available.

5. New forms of electrical energy input will be used to power American homes.

6. American retail stores will continue to lose market share thanks to online stores which are able to sell cheaper merchandise thanks to less real world storefront cost overhead.

7. The Nintendo Wii will still be the most sold American consumer home video game station.

8. There will be a greater amount of more successful artificial intelligence and human virtual reality experiments.

9. Google may continue to gain greater profits and growth, but overall quality of company output will decrease.

10. The way the mainstream movie and music industries work to generate profit will have to be majorly overhauled to indefinitely survive online piracy.
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1. Microsoft finally buys Yahoo!
2. Laptops continue to get smaller, desktop follow.
3. More people enter the cloud for computing.
4. A current start up will integrate video advertising, cpm/cpa adserving, and social media to come out on top when the economy turns for the better.
5. Twitter will be bought by a larger company.
6. Myspace will continue to compete with Facebook but fail. Not bankrupt fail, but perceived by everyone as a FAIL.
7. Mahalo will hire me as Director of Client Services.
8. Advertisers will continue to turn to Hulu. Their advertising is similar to commercials and people understand TV commercial advertising.
9. Google will find a great revenue stream with an ad platform for the G-phone.
10. Live streamed content will become more popular than reality TV.
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Microsoft shows the world that the company that dominated the PC market for over two decades is now back in the driver's seat with Windows 7.

Apple begins their fall after Jobs hands the reigns over to a guy no one knows or cares about.

Countless "Web 2.0" darlings will fall by the way-side as the novelty of their services wear off... and their uselessness becomes apparent.

Consumers will revolt against broadband companies as bandwidth throttling spreads like the plague.

The Wii will continue to sell consoles even though there are no games to be played.

The Xbox 360 will rule the roost and fill Microsoft pockets thanks to the attached games/devices per console ratio.

Playstation Home will finally launch and quickly be forgotten.

Twitter catches on like wild-fire with growth numbers similar to Facebook... yet the company still won't have a clue how to bring in revenue.

The winner of the High Definition DVD wars finally becomes irrelevant as HD Digital Downloads and streaming become the norm.

Digg finally figures out how to shut down power users and giving the power back to the people once and for all.
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- Microsoft will change the name of Windows Vista to Windows Mojave after their ad campaign confuses people.
- I have this strange feeling that around February 17, all TVs will start receiving transmits in HD... I don't know where I got that idea...
- Apple will release a touch screen laptop.
- Sony and Microsoft will respond to the Wii's sales by releasing more family friendly games that promote healthiness and family-togetherness.
- BluRay discs will become more common than DVDs.
- A major city in America will be hailed for being the first city in the world where you can go anywhere in the city and never go out of a Wi-Fi zone.
- The Beatles will finally come to iTunes, after their arrival at the online music store was promised for 2008.
- Wireless keyboards and mouses (mice?) will become more common than wired ones.

[Here's a bizarre prediction for the distant future: All outlets will be replaced by USB ports.]
Source(s):
Most of my predictions are based on events that happened in 2008...

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As with every year, tech will get smaller and faster.
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social networking websites turn to there users to help them implement business models that work.

Social networking websites set up partnerships with the customer service departments of major consumer companies.

Social networking websites make millions from operating competitions and social advertising.
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10. Online communities will continue to flourish, especially those with smart phone compatibility. Facebook will increase in traffic, and Myspace will decrease. Some online communities will disappear and at least one other will become ubiquitous within 2009.
9. The number of people who access the internet on the phone will double.
8. Microsoft will come out with an operating system that will be a huge improvement on Vista, but they won't understand why XP users still aren't flocking to buy it. Browser apps will flourish, as people realize their operating systems are good enough.
7. Computer sales will drop, but the number of households owning a computer will increase due to the durability and continued usefulness of two-year-old computers.
6. Apple will come out with a smaller version of the iPhone, though they might not calle it the "iPhone nano".
5. Macs increase their market share by 50%.
4. The sale of touch screen smartphones countinues to be huge. By the end of the year, at least 30% of people under 30 who have cell phones will have a smart phone.
3. Video game systems will not sell as well as other years. Hand held game players will become more popular, and smart phone apps will see an intense expansion. People will find more value in the apps that run on phones than on the looks and physical features of the phones themselves.
2. We will see an increase in the ability for non-luxury cars to be able to connect to phones, laptops, music players, and the internet, especially towards the end of the year.
1. Internet capabilities will increase drastically around the world. At least one country that has less than 10% area where broadband is available will see an increase of that to over 50%.

Predictions of things that won't happen:
1. We'll still be far from a VIABLE computer we can run by verbal command.
2. TV commercials will still exist. It won't all be product placement, though there will be an insane increase in product placement into shows and TV.
3. We will not develop a viable flying car in 2009 (or any year).
4. Less than 1% of laptops will run on fuel cells.
5. The United States will (luckily) not block any websites as a few developed countries have been considering doing.
6. The Smartcar won't be the car to own, despite its tiny size.
7. We will not solve global warming by any technological advance.
8. The dream of the iPort, the new phone by Apple that actually teleports you to work, will not come to fruition.
9. In Mother Russia, car will still drive you.
10. Every doomsday prediction will still be wrong. Miss Cleo won't tell you that bus is about to hit you. The fancy 2010 ball drop will be watched on TV by almost everyone on the east coast of the United States
Source(s):
Ouija Board and Magic 8 Ball

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1.) Gmail + GrandCentral integration is the biggest game-changer of 2009

2.) YHOO gets a massive restructuring AND merges with one of the larger failing newspaper publishers.
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A decline in DVD sales as more movies will be available as instantly from netflix, blockbuster and other providers.

A continued reduction of news in print form. Publishers will need to move to the web to survive long term.

64 gb Ipod Touch
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Touch Screen iMac and (maybe) Macbook; other companies incorporate the single piece design concept from the new Macs; microblogging sites completely take over as the public's attention span drops further; internet tv sites like Hulu.com garner better ratings than their on-air counterparts; More events are streamed live on the net; Alternative energy technology makes greater strides; Blu-Ray is considered "just decent" as Holographic DVD comes to market; 1440 resolution TVs make people's eyeballs explode from being to darn good looking; the virtual housing market collapses, leaving Second Life's economy in ruins.
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1. Emerging Fuel Cell Technology will radically alter battery time for portable devices and open the door for radical improvements in portable processing power.

2. Inexpensive "White Space" devices will make 50Mb+ wireless internet bandwidth ubiquitous in urban and sub-urban areas.

3. Cell phone customers, many now with data plans, will organize and boycott text messaging all together.

4. Twitter will deploy a secure for pay B2B version of it's product as a tool for business to stimulate innovative conversations.

5. Hard Drives will becomes like Tape backup drives, and solid state, or organic based memory will become our new secondary storage medium.

6. Touch, gestures, video tracking and physical interactions with appliances, applications and technology will do more than offer novel interaction with software. Unforeseen benefits, and abilities will emerge as we deepen our physical connection to technology.

7. Further contextulization of the online experience as concierge services monitor what you're up to and provide expertise, recommendations and relevant advertising based on your declared wants and needs.

8. Desktop Publishing -> Desktop Music Production -> Desktop Video Production -> Desktop Film Production -> 2009 -> Desktop Micro Manufacturing -> Desktop Genetics

9. Technology will go green out of necessity as "Technical Nutrients" (ref. McDonough) become more scarce. We will hit "peak metal" and it will quickly become cheaper to harvest metal and other resources out of landfills than mines. This will affect our ability to buy things, forcing the industry to move to a lease model in 2010 for everything from computers to cars.

10. Serenity. Companies like Mahalo, will figure out ways to make the exchange of information humane again, help us to filter out the noise, consolidate all our information feeds and streams, enabling us to stay connected without the frantic googling and app switching. Sort of a mood modeled life display with contextual search, feeds and soothing colors!

Happy New Year

nappyD
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I posted my predictions on Blind Five Year Old:
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/2009-internet-and-technology-predictions

Here's the Cliff Notes version:

1) Facebook Becomes A Portal

2) Identity Systems Fail

3) Video Advertising Succeeds

4) Microformats Go Mainstream

5) Banner CTR Becomes Obsolete

6) RSS Adoption Spikes

7) Kindle 2.0 Flops

8) Google Search Share Stalls

9) FriendFeed Surpasses Twitter

10) Someone ‘Dies’ (no, not Steve Jobs)
Source(s):
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/2009-internet-and-technology-predictions

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1. Facebook Connect will be deployed far and wide which will empower users to spend more time interacting outside of Facebook to the detriment of traffic to Facebook itself.
2. Microsoft will lose interest in the advertising market place and the only sign of this will be no new deal announcements.
3. digg's traffic will drop consistently as they struggle with 'the algorithm'.
4. The first mainstream webos's will show up. Web meaning distributed (installed) and updated via the web - given sufficient bandwidth, even booting via it. OS not meaning something that turns your browser into a processor stress-test but a real-live, bare on the metal OS.
5. There'll be a mainstream trend to have your own domain and subsequent presence on the web caused in part by a change in work practices stirred by the economy.
6. Twitter will sell access to the fire-hose.
7. Mahalo will be mainstream towards the years end.
8. Apple will sell a device built around a tactile touchscreen that has a form-factor between an iPod Touch and a MacBook. It'll take 3 revisions before it sells though.
9. There will be a big site created in Silicon Beach (aka .au). It'll be hosted in the US, incorporated in the US and eventually sold in the US.
10. Neither Windows 7 or Snow Leopard will raise any significant fanaticism amongst the tech community who've grown tired of the desktop paradigm.
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I had a discussion on this during a live video podcast in Singapore, and my prediction is that Apple will release a multitouch netbook, which will be small enough to put into a handbag / pouch, yet functional enough to be used for on-the-go-computing. The next day, rumours were released about a larger form factor iPod Touch.

I reckon they will sell loads of these, since the iPhone OS is easy to use, target younger generation, older generation and everyone in between.
Source(s):
http://www.pcworld.com/article/156221/next_from_apple_a_largescreen_ipod_to...

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1. Microsoft's Ad Campaign Picks up Steam and Drags Apple Through the Mud
2. Microsoft's Windows 7 is released on time and is a huge success both in speed and reliability
3. Apple's Growing Market share leads them to become a larger target for hackers and virus-free-PR spin gets blown out of the water- as many of their customers are compromised.
4. The G-Phone gains momentium and People's frustration(s) with the IPhones closed platform becomes Reflected in Sales.
5. Microsoft's Zune MP3 player and store become the new Ipod.
6. The White house uses the Internet to inform the public like never before (via Netcasts, blogs, etc.)
7. New Wireless Data Projects start to be implemented in the analog TV's old spectrum.
8. Google's plan's to take over the world are revealed in a global video podcasts containing a over weight balled man and white cat with a "G" painted on either side of its body.
9. Millions of Americans wonder what happened to their local TV stations and channels.
10. Twitter is bought by Google.
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1. Google's android will continue to grow and be used on more devices, becoming the true iphone killer it was marketed as

2. Microsoft's windows 7 will make a slight rebound in their market share, but Internet explorer will lose it's majority to mozilla firefox

3. Devices will be made making use of the recently auctioned 700mhz spectrum and the white spaces spectrum

4. physical media (dvd, bluray) will begin it's slow decline into obsolescence as hd on demand media streaming and downloads (netflix online) becomes more common

5. cable card technology will finally come to fruition and rid us all of the evil set-top boxes

6. a breakthrough in battery technology will change the world.

7. The FCC makes up it's mind on free national wifi, deployment begins in 2010

8. Apples insanely proprietary nature causes it to collapse in on itself

9. newspapers will move online or cease to exist

10. Facebook will realize it does not have a sustainable profit model and will shutdown. Google will buy it for pennies, resurrect it and integrate it into their extensive line of webapps.
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1. Google acquires Firefox and integrates many of its features into Google Chrome - The improved Chrome browser gains significant market share on Internet Explorer
2. Tesla will announce further delays in production due to the tough economic times and will be forced to modify their business plan to becoming a supplier to other car manufacturers
3. Bluray will not catch on and will be essentially dropped (little to no floor space) from major retail stores
4. Amazon will release the Kindle 2 which will be targeted to college students as a replacement to physical textbooks
5. The iPhone 2, or whatever the new name of it will be, will raise the bar for cell phones and set Apple that much farther away from the competition
6. Yahoo sale rumors will continue to float around but it will not be sold and will see its traffic and services deteriorate over time as its users and employees jump ship
7. Wikipedia will introduce advertising on the site to generate revenue and keep the site alive
8. Hundreds of blogs will be closed/severely cut back due to lower advertising revenues and lack of profitability
9. An inexpensive Linux PC will make it to the mainstream market and begin to catch on with users dissatisfied with Windows but who can't afford a Mac
10. YouTube will try to become more like Hulu by adding more commercial content with advertising but will be unsuccessful and ultimately the recipient of more lawsuits
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1. Google (GOOG) hits $400.

2. Apple (AAPL) hits $120.

3. Salesforce.com (CRM) becomes acquisition target.

4. Private companies: Leveraged online retailers start to die. Those bearish on Twitter and Facebook will be proved right in a sense; they'll struggle to justify their valuations. However, the savvier will start to become more confident that it all it takes is a business model and both of these babies can fly solo.

5. Kindle's worth is brought into question. What is the point of this as a stand-alone device when it can be a feature on a phone? Amazon (AMZN) realize their power is as a retailer and they start to put more weight behind selling eBooks, available on a phone, yet they continue to sell the device.

6. Apple (APPL) sells much cheaper iPhone.

7. Watching quality TV programming online grows like a weed. The older media companies start to appreciate that it's better to trade analog dollars for digital pennies, rather than nothing at all. CPMs remain very strong in this area as there are not enough PVs to go around. The web starts to be thought of more as a distribution channel, perhaps one day more tied to the TV, than as a TV competitor in the online premium video space.

8. The media and businesses start to realize that mobile is just a way to access the web, but much more businesses start to serve a different version of their website to mobile browsers. Some things like mobile-specific applications start to flourish, but analysts start to appreciate that it isn't going to create a second wave of Google's (GOOG) and Microsoft's (MSFT). It is also realized that mobile is going to be more disruptive to the desktop than give birth to a new mega-industry. By and large it's an extension of the web with a dozen or so low billion dollar companies, but that will take much longer than one year. In the years to come it might cause some changes, hardly tectonic, in the percentage of the market companies like search engines control.

9. Text messaging start to see growth decelerate in the West, as more people realize that it's just an expensive way to send an email. Phone carriers and manufacturers can no longer have as much control on how users use their phones.

10. Bigger companies start to realize that they are way too exposed to Google (GOOG) in much the same way that banks are too exposed to sub prime. They don't have enough time to do anything serious about it.
Source(s):
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/11/trading-analog.html

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1. Big Fat IT Companies will try to learn from the fall of Lehman Brothers, GM, Ford, etc that only acqisition sare not going to make them survive in the market rather the innovation can.
2. Apple will continue to consolidate its position in the market.
3. Web 2.0 is going to continue its craze.
4. Cloud Computing is going to be the technology of the year.
5. RDBMS concept will become obsolete with new DB technologies like Drizzle.
6. Mobile Penetration will continue to go deeper with Mobile Technologies and applications gaining strength with iPhone and Android.
7. MS will mark its comeback this year with some solid technical innovations as already announced with Pay-Per-Use PC patent on Christmas.
8. NVDIA will give a run-for-money to Intel.
9. IT sector will be the first sector to recover from the recession.
10. RIA will strengthen its position in the Enterprise Management Domain.
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I will write my first tech based book
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1. Yahoo! will be bought by a non-Internet, media company.
2. Major newspaper companies will remodel themselves and become as big a media deliverer on the Internet as CNN or MSNBC.
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1. Apple announces a Netbook right before Steve Jobs leaves.
2. Windows 7's release will be accelerated - it will be out by the end of this year.
3. Twitter and MySpace will close.
4. YouTube will start putting more ads on its pages, and cracking down on copyright violations.
5. Major Hollywood studios will start to focus more on portable video devices - by the end of the year, all DVDs will come with digital copies.
6. The Zune will be discontinued.
7. iTunes will remove DRM from the last of its tracks. The Beatles will sign on with iTunes, followed shortly by AC/DC and Kid Rock.
8. Sometime between September and the end of the year, due to slumping computer sales, Apple will start selling versions of OSX that can be run on PCs.
9. Firefox will surpass Internet Explorer in deployment rate... then, a major security hole will be found in Firefox.
10. Due to the lack of games, the Wii will actually stop flying off the shelves, causing Nintendo to drop the price... but that won't be enough to get its sales numbers to increase, making the 360 come out on top.
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Apple - Steve dies, and releases $599 netbook
Twitter - goes mainstream (my mom joins, unprovoked)
Yahoo - joins google ad network, BOSS grows nicely as well
Mahalo - Answers grows very nicely (and other stuff I can't say :)
Google - GrandCentral integration with other google services, android rocks
LinkedIn - benefits nicely from all the recent lay offs
Microsoft - Acquires 3+ small to med sized companies
MySpace - launches cool new feature - my lips are sealed
Facebook - releases better email system so no need to leave
Friendfeed - continues to roll out hotness on a regular basis
wikipedia - has big $ trouble
ping.fm - you'll start using in
qik - many countries + devices
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Everyone’s predicting doom and gloom for the tech industry next year, and hey, who are we to argue?
The verdict: Dark clouds for startups, venture capitalists and the tech industry as a whole. Still, 2009 won’t be bad for everyone, so we tried to bring out some silver lining, too.


*The tech IPO market will be dry for the whole year. Silicon Valley produced just one initial public offering in 2008 with the launch of a security systems firm called ArcSight. Compare that to 22 a year ago and an average of 28 per year since 1985, according to the San Jose Mercury News. It’s hard to fathom that next year could be worse, but it’s entirely possible given the state of the economy, the weakness of the investment banks, the malaise on Wall Street, and the pounding that is just beginning for a lot of the tech industry’s bigger companies.

*Spending will boom on energy infrastructure. This may seem like an obvious pick, since president-elect Barack Obama has already promised as much as $800 billion of economic stimulus, including a large cut for infrastructure. That will include everything from highways and national broadband to sewers. But with the push for cleantech, energy will certainly play a major role. The question is where the money will go, and our bet is that flashy projects that employ large numbers of workers, like building wind farms or high-voltage interstate power lines, will take precedence over quieter but possibly more effective ideas, like education campaigns teaching homeowners how to consume less energy.

http://arstechnica.com/news.media/android_phone.png
*There will be more than 40 Android mobile devices next year, and the Android platform will be outselling the iPhone by July. I made a similar prediction to Russell Buckley earlier this month, and I haven’t seen anything to change my mind. Rumors are swirling about how many Android devices will appear next year. There’s even talk that Google has commitments for 50 devices already, which makes this prediction somewhat moderate. Android adoption has surged in the industry after the G1 launch; on Android mailing lists and forums, you can see that many notable companies have started Android development projects without publicizing them yet. Many mobile startups are depending on the mass adoption of smartphones, so it would be good news if this prediction comes true.

http://www.pure-mirage.com/images/Gallery_Images/Maya/images/3d_Apple_Logo_102.jpg
*Apple’s financial performance will continue to defy gravity as iPhone, MacBook and iPod sales stay strong. With the iPhone just now rolling out to Wal-Mart stores and new countries such as China likely for 2009, sales of Apple’s hottest device will keep their heat. Likewise, the iPod touch and iPod nano will continue to sell well while MacBooks will eat up notebook market-share (despite being higher priced than their PC counterparts). Apple’s actual adjusted net income grew an “astounding” 124.6 percent between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the same period in 2008, but that was underreported because of the subscription method of accounting used.

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*The cloud computing market will heat up, but Amazon will remain the king. Tech companies, especially smaller ones, will be taking a close look at cloud computing as a way to save money during the downturn. Big players like Microsoft, Google and Rackspace all announced their own platforms for cloud applications this year, and all of them will probably find some success in 2009 — but we haven’t seen major startups build their business on Google App Engine, and Microsoft’s Windows Azure remains a question mark. With its built-in lead, existing ecosystem, and plans for additional features, Amazon will end 2009 the way it began, as the leader of the pack.


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*Cleantech scams will multiply. A job in cleantech is akin to working for UNICEF; reducing emissions or building solar panels is the next best thing to curing cancer or ending a war. Right? Well … maybe not. This year saw an unpleasant hint of scandals to come in cleantech, including complaints of corruption and intimidation about wind projects in upstate New York, solar manufacturing pollution in China, project application fraud in Spain, lawsuits between electric car companies, and a nationwide rash of solar panel thefts. As the pace picks up and cleantech becomes a booming industry, expect similar problems and others including dubious carbon credits and offsets, fake coal carbon capture-schemes, short-circuited electric car sales, and more.

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*Twitter will roll out its business model — and if it doesn’t work, will sell. Look for the model to include corporate accounts to make money off of tweets for shilling purposes. If that business model succeeds, Twitter will keep growing and going along solo; if it doesn’t, look for one of the big players to step in and buy Twitter for something in the nine-figure range. Twitter chief executive Evan Williams will be busy tonight cooking up a “master plan” for 2009.

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*Microsoft will launch an iPhone competitor. The so-called Zune phone rumors have been making the rounds for a while. While other companies simply give up when they fail, Microsoft just launches a fully integrated product. Consider the Zune music player itself, born after Microsoft became frustrated with the whole group of PlaysForSure companies and their inability to knock the iPod out. Now that Apple’s mojo has shifted from iPod to iPhone, Microsoft will likely have to follow, even though that means releasing a phone that competes with the company’s Windows Mobile software customers. Once again, Microsoft is the underdog. There are enough tea leaves showing that a design is well under way. It’s just a question of whether Microsoft will pull the trigger. We think it has no choice.


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*iTunes will go completely DRM-free. It has been well-reported that Apple is in talks with the major music labels about having them all include their music without digital rights management (DRM) in the iTunes store. Currently, only EMI has done this, but some recent iTunes anomalies suggest things are about to change. Back in 2007, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said that half of all music in iTunes would be DRM-free by the end of the year. We’re now entering 2009, and that still hasn’t happened. Don’t think Jobs doesn’t know that.

*Venture capital funding will drop sharply. VCs already acknowledge that a decline is likely, according to a survey by the National Venture Capital Association; the only question is how much funding will fall, and who will get hit the hardest. It’s safe to say that if you’re an early-stage web company hoping to make money from advertising, things will be tough. Still, companies with strong products and strong business plans that don’t rely on big infusions of VC cash could find themselves positioned for real growth in 2010 and beyond.
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- Twitter will grow even more-- despite the haters. Will add features and maybe even a pay-to-use tiered feature (like Flickr) that gives paying customers more features for a nominal annual cost (say $15/yr). Free version Twitter users will have to suffer thru ads or other feature poor access.

- Microsoft's pay to use computing model will fall flat-- like that Bob concept they had a few years back
- Online theft, scams etc. will grow as a direct relationship to the US & world economies slowing over the next 12-18 months.

- Online original video content will continue to grow-- especially if the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) goes on strike. More people will start launching their own content networks using TriCasters and the like. Leo LaPorte's TWIT revenue will take off because he has shown leadership in pioneering the path (even though others got there first).

-The faux tech celebrities will start to have their lights dimmed, as people realize there is no content value [there]. There is no there, there.

- Tech Companies that are not cash flow savvy will be out of business soon. There will be VH1 or rev3 shows featuring busted tech millionaires who lost most or all of the money made prior to 2009. The shows will ask, where are they now? The show (or website) will be similar to VH1's Behind the Music, but will have a dorky title like, "Behind the Code".

- More Wind Farms will start to emerge worldwide, as wind is more viable than people think. The first company to lower & improve the cost of photovoltaics will become the Kodak of the green energy decades. But it also has to get easier to install.
- Facebook has the inertia that Microsoft had in the late 1990s and will continue to grow for a few years, until major privacy issues arise. A lack of innovation and newness will eventually trip up Facebook but probably not for a few years.
- LinkedIn will finally get some mainstream respect in 2009. As the economy falters, its membership has skyrocketed as executives and professionals try to amp up their networking. The best thing about Linkedin, it's mostly free of the noise from kids and the jerks that inhabit most other social networks (because of how people interact.)

-Twitter and other web based SMS type text & image rich messaging services will take out the phone companies profits on text messaging. (At least, let's hope so.)

- Sites like Freecycle.org that emphasize recycling, and helping others in return for nothing, will gain in popularity. (This is one reason why twitter is such a great concept.)

- Sites and stores that give away free wi-fi, will see an increase in traffic and sales. (This may seem obvious to some of you in Seattle, the SF Bay area & other tech savvy cities, but it's not widespread in much of the rest of the country.)
- Video streaming finally comes to more US phones-- maybe even comes to iPhone in late 2009 (but is Apple too late?)
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