2011 Technology Predictions

It’s that time of year again. A new year approaches. After last year’s long shot predictions I am going to focus and make more realistic ones across all aspects of technology. I will make 10 predictions, put explanations on why I think this and sit back and see what 2011 will bring.

1. Microsoft will announce the plans for the next Xbox – Microsoft will announce the Xbox 720 toward the end of the year. It will be targeted for a holiday 2013 release at the earliest. The big thing won’t be the focus on graphical enhancement, but on what the device will become. It will be the central media hub for the home, video games will not be the primary focus it will be just another thing it will do. Teaming with AT&T it will a full cable on demand device aiming to change broadcast TV.
2. Apple will buy Facebook – Apple’s Ping is a failure. The world’s largest social network merging with the world’s largest media site makes sense. Facebook will have a major merger in 2011, I think it will be Apple.
3. A large city will have a long black out – A city in the United States will have a major black out due to a software upgrade that goes really bad. There will be stories of cyber-terrorism, Suxtnet, but it will come down to a simple upgrade that went bad.
4. The Year Of The Cloud – This will be the year of the cloud. With companies, Google included, coming out with cloud based operating systems, this will be the year of average consumer explosion. BUT, it will not happen until there is large, affordable, true backup cloud service for all your devices. I have blogged about it before but Dropbox (too expensive), Mozy, Carbonite,and other current services are just not there for true backup services.If someone get’s that right, easy, and cheap the cloud (virtualized computing) will take off for the single consumer. Corporate will not.
5. iTunes starts to move away from local storage – Right now you buy a song, download it, load it to a device and play it. I think iTunes will move away from that model and go to an online, streaming option and release a mega cheap iPod Touch with low HD space because you wont need it. Think about it. If you could store your local collection up in the ‘cloud’ and through a streaming option get your collections streamed to your devices. Perhaps Apple buying Pandora to do it?
6. Cell Phone Companies are going to change their pricing models – In 2011 you will see, probably with AT&T first, minute based cell phone plans go away. Why? Look at how people use their devices. Communication is data not voice as the primary method. Cell phone company’s infrastructures are changing for bandwidth requirements not cell channels. So change the way you are billed and focus on the data and give you unlimited voice. The downside of this is two fold. It’s harder for the user to tell how much data they have used to avoid over charges and second, if Net Neutrality B.S. becomes reality, corporations will tier price the users to death for data.
7. Another Dot-Com Boom starts – There will be a large economic upturn and an explosion of startup companies like there was in the late 90s. This time it will all be Cloud Service Providers and at the center of it will be Amazon. Amazon will grow faster than it ever has before, but not because of retail but because of it’s server hosting services. Buy Stock now.
8. The decline of the laptop – The traditional laptop/PC in homes will see it’s decline in favor of ever increasing, powerful tablets and smart devices. If any of the other cloud predictions come true, this will accelerate it. You will see news stories around this late 2011 closer to the Holiday Season.
9. 3D Flops – The whole 3D thing will fade away as a fad. Things will be tried out for the first half of 2011 but will slowly fade away as 3D always does. Who want’s to wear those stupid glasses?
10. Netflix makes a big TV deal – Netflix will announce a deal with one or all of the TV big boys NBC, ABC, CBS to stream commercial filled episodes soon after they originally air taking on Hulu. If this happens, Hulu will disappear almost over night.

There we go. 10 predictions for 2011 from a regular IT guy. This time next year we’ll see how I did.

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