My tech predictions for 2012
Apple will release an iPhone 5 and it will have a slightly bigger display, but same camera as 4s.
They will also release something new that has to do with the tv, but it won’t just be a piece of hardware.
Companies will finally see what Amazon did: hardware is just a commodity for delivering content. He who has good content to deliver will thrive in the business. Google understands this but unfortunately they don’t seem to have any sense of taste or creativity, so I think they will continue to buy products and trying to one-up the others by releasing reiterations of last-year stuff. Eventualy one of their products in 2012 will stick, but I wouldn’t bet on anything ecxiting.
Blackberry will have a very bad year and probably will admit failure, not having understood that it’s not the product that counts but the people behind it. 2013 will probably be the year someone buys them out, but I wouldn’t count on this either.
The last shot at them will come from Siri, which goes worldwide in 2012 and businessmen will love it.
Meanwhile Apple will continue to innovate by introducing at least one of those “why didn’t we thought of that before” things. And as I just said, I guess it will have something to do with content or content delivery, not hardware.
Maybe they will also introduce their new “iMaps” app.
Finally people will start buying more and more smartphones and tablets, rendering pc’s obsolete - and the world a better place, by freeing us up from these “last-year” and uncomfortable “trucks”. Our backs will thank us all.
Samsung will continue to be the copycat in the industry and will start having a hard time because of all the bad publicity on one side, and the always less open Android on the other. Samsung could do better by hiring good brains, they seem to have a good energy and will, but I wouldn’t bet on that either, not for this year at least.
2012 won’t be a good year for Facebook. They are being attacked from all sides in the mobile space (where everyone is going). Instagram, Foursquare, Twitter, Flipboard (they will be big in 2012), just to name a few… Facebook’s all-html5 strategy doesn’t work well on mobile devices (take a look at Path app to see the difference), and their business model based on advertising won’t go well either. That doesn’t work well on mobile too.
Someone will buy Kodak. I hope not for the technology but for the brand.
iPad will get Retina display.
More of a wish than a prediction: It would be cool if Apple also released 7 inch tablet with a retina display along with some sort of new editorial/media product. Maybe their content-creation tool rumored for this January is going to be just that. It could end the website/html era and offer a revolutionary way to create, deliver and read content. This, in a 7 inch iPad with retina would be great, and it would blow Amazon Fire away.
This year will also see the coming of all new mobile payment systems. We will start to feel paper money as old.
One last thing: in 2012 a new company will come along and revolutionize the e-commerce space ;)
