Last week, Apple announced their long-awaited Apple Watch. Having heard some very smart people suggest that Apple Watch is going to crush Basis, and many other existing players in wearables, I just had to share my 2 cents on this matter.
Bottom line: I think it won’t have that impact!
A couple of days ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook Home. Rather than the speculated new phone from Facebook, it’s instead, a new “home” screen of the Android phone. Or, put differently, an Android Facebook “skin”. Wired went as far as to refer to this as Zuck’s Android Takeover.
Facebook Home has vividly demonstrated that the Android ecosystem has been a double-edged sword, both for the handset manufacturers that are on the Android bandwagon, and to a lesser extent, to the mobile telecom operators.
Continue reading Facebook Home Highlights Android as a Double-edged Sword
Continuing the annual tradition: Last year, my predictions for 2012 turned out to be remarkably good with 85% accuracy! That’s even better than the 77% accuracy of 2010 and 2011 predictions. If you want to check it out yourself, here’s the scorecard.
I loved the video summary Google did for 2012. I actually didn’t mention many of these developments. So surely you must consider my predictions not “all that will be”, but rather, what will be within specific areas that I’m focused on. Obviously, there’s a lot more going on that I don’t touch on.
For the past 5 years I’ve been privately tracking the accuracy of my predictions, I must admit that my results have been pretty good. For the last two years I’ve been publishing annual prediction podcasts within Amdocs called DoxCast which, together with Adi Lachman, I’ve co-created and co-hosted. DoxCast gave me an opportunity to be “on the record” with my yearly predictions – for 2010 and 2011. My accuracy on these is 77%. With these results, it seems appropriate to start a new tradition on my blog – annual predictions for the year to come. Without further ado, here are my predictions for 2012 in no particular order: Continue reading My 2012 Predictions
Since everyone is making iPhone 5 predictions, I will too. Let me acknowledge up front that I do not have any inside information, knowledge of leaked designs, or special access to the powers that be. I am just trying to figure out what Apple plans to do by extrapolating from Apple’s past activities. By considering how the company evolves its products responds to the capabilities and features of competing products, including things that it tends to hold back on for a variety of reasons, I can make some reasonable predictions. Continue reading My iPhone 5 Predictions 
Cisco is not a happy place to be these days. Last week, when Cisco announced they would be cutting as many as 11,500 employees, or 15% of their 73,408-strong workforce, I was reminded of the earlier step they took last quarter, when Cisco announced it would shut down and discontinued Flip, pink-slipping 550 employees. You might recall that Cisco acquired Pure Digital, the manufacturer of the popular Flip digital camcorder, for $590 million back in 2009. Even then many observed this was not a great fit. Continue reading Did competition kill Flip or Cisco fumbled?
I’ve been asked to deliver an opening keynote at an upcoming conference. In this talk, I’ve been asked to survey future technologies and how they might shape communication service providers landscape. To prepare, I started jotting down a list of all the interesting future technologies and it immediately occurred to me that many of these are already here with us today. This reminded me of the quote by William Gibson – “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”.
And indeed, the difference between today and the future is often merely the pervasiveness of these technologies. In most cases, the technologies exist and their potential can be anticipated to a large extent, if considered carefully.
But then I wondered whether I missed something or got my estimates wrong.
It’s much easier to see the direction of a trend than to know when it will be realized. For example, we all know that at some point in the future, cars will drive themselves. The question isn’t whether or not this will happen. The question is only “when?” this will be a reality. Similarly, we can now all see that at some point in the future, people will barely use paper books. These will become a thing of the past. The really interesting question is “when?” will this future be reality. Certainly in less than 100 years, perhaps less than 20, and perhaps even less than 10 years from now.
Well, innovators must get their timing right – bringing a solution to market too early can be as devastating to a venture as bringing it too late.
So I was thinking, perhaps inspired by my crowdfunding blog post, that you might help me figure out if I got it right. I’m going to put forth my initial estimate of when and why I believe a set of technologies will become mature and pervasive (not ubiquitous). When I say “pervasive”, I mean when will the technology be widely used – perhaps as much as 25% of the potential users will already be using it. At that point in time, it would probably not yet completely take over its predecessor technology.
Then, I’d like you to help me. Please point out any important technologies I have missed (note that I intentionally dropped over 40 items from this list, as otherwise this would have become a very long list) and also comment on the time you think they would become pervasive and why.
So here we go: the technologies, when they will mature, and why:
| Tech Trend | Year when pervasive (at least 25% of the users) | Why |
| Mobile Money / Peer-to-Peer (P2P) money exchange |
2014 / 2017 |
In developing economies this will come sooner and will gradually penetrate developed economies. |
| Location-Based Services (LBS) |
2015 |
Some might argue that we’re already there with so many GPS-enabled smartphones. The question is when will 25% of users be expecting and using services and experiences based on their location. |
| Internet-connected TV |
2015 |
I believe it will take that long to reach a quarter of the population. To some degree, we’re still in early-adopter phase right now. And I don’t distinguish here between the various methods to net-enable the TV experience. |
| Cloud computing |
2016 |
Till cloud computing operates a quarter of business compute resources. |
| Telepresence |
2017 |
What is marketed today by some vendors as Telepresence is simply higher quality video conferencing. The original vision of Telepresence has taken a backseat. I here refer to that real vision and refer to it in a business context. It’s when companies have telepresence rather than high quality video conferencing. |
| Near-Field Communication (NFC) |
2018 |
It might take some time to roll out this technology for contactless payment systems, for instance. Especially in developed economies where alternative forms of credit and payment are widespread. |
| Zero emission alternative energy powers the world |
2018 |
Costs must come down and the substantial focus on “green” and various incentives will help bring that about, eventually. |
| 3D TV |
2018 |
Until 3D TV is in 25% of the homes. See my blog post about 3D TV. |
| Social communications |
2018 |
People use free communication via social media and P2P VoIP/IM rather than paid services by communication service providers to conduct most of their communication. |
| Cloud-based operating systems (truly thin clients) – or is this a cycle? |
2018 |
Thin/thick, dumb/smart terminal is a pendulum. Will it swing back (e.g. Chrome)? Perhaps, as connectivity truly becomes ubiquitous. |
| eBooks replace books in all current forms of use (including education) |
2019 |
It will take a few years to acquire all these books for educational institutions, but eventually, it’ll happen. |
| Mobile broadband at 10 Mbps |
2019 |
Late stages of 4G technologies might get there on existing spectrum and consumer insatiable demand for bandwidth. |
| Ubiquitous broadband connectivity |
2019 |
There is an expectation that for most populated areas on the planet, anybody traveling there can receive an affordable broadband connection. |
| High-efficiency inductive charging |
2019 |
Aren’t we tired with all the wired chargers? At some point these will be replaced, no? How about 8 years from now? |
| Smart meters |
2019 |
Smart energy saving devices in the home and remotely accessible and administered power meters will roll out, eventually. There are some geographies (such as Italy) where this might have already happened, but when will it reach a quarter of the users? |
| Telemedicine |
2019 |
Medical professionals will routinely monitor patients from remote. |
| Natural gesture interfaces (e.g. touch, hand gestures, vocals) will be used for almost everything |
2021 |
I’m not yet sure these interfaces are always better. Right now, I’m using a keyboard, for instance. However, in the future I might use Gmail Motion. It was announced April 1, 2011. You must check it out. |
| The Internet of Things / Machine to Machine (M2M) |
2021 |
Since these are not “used by people”, it doesn’t exactly make sense to talk about pervasiveness in terms of users. Therefore, the benchmark here is a bit different – when 25% of “things” are connected to the net that are not operated by people. So for this, tablets, smartphones, PCS would not count. I think it will take longer than some anticipate. |
| Self-driving vehicles |
2021 |
Not too far into the future, we’ll see these in our neighborhood. Wouldn’t that be cool? |
| The semantic web |
2021 |
Everything’s meaning is connected and understood. When we ask questions, the meaning will be used to determine the answer. |
| Digital life integration |
2026 |
Our digital lives are still very disparate. Contacts, calendars, music, photos, videos, etc. All created and stored on a variety of devices and mediums and not easily accessible. It will take some time to resolve this in a pervasively available method, but it’s bound to eventually be solved. |
| Voice and text simultaneous translation |
2026 |
I don’t think this is ready yet and it might be comical today. |
| Artificial body part replacement for many more parts |
2026 |
The brain will probably be the last to be replaceable, but I believe it too will be “bionically” enhanced in due course. Before then we’ll have all sorts of limbs and internal organs. |
| Cure for cancer |
2026 |
This is for many forms of cancer, through genetically specific and personal medicine. Optimistic, perhaps. Something to hope for. |
| Physical books no longer in practical use |
2031 |
Seeing a physical book will become a rarity. Libraries will, effectively, be museums. Most will not exist as all books are accessible online and on reading devices anywhere. |
| All storage be cloud-based |
2031 |
We’ll no longer have DVDs and BluRay discs, or any other portable medium for that matter, all data will be cloud-resident. No more new forms of media will be required by individuals. |
| Home automation |
2031 |
If you’re wealthy, you can have full automation of your home today. When will this be a reality for 25% of the population? The issue is retrofitting existing homes, of course. That’s a long cycle. |
| Affordable brain-power computer (yet not brain-capable) |
2031 |
One can buy a computer, like a PC today, but its power will be able to compute the equivalent of a human brain. However, as it will not operate like a human brain, it will have only niche uses. |
| Affordable space tourism |
2036 |
You won’t have to be filthy rich and it becomes an everyday occurrence. Those with income at the top 10 percentile will be able to afford a trip. Some believe it’s nearly here already. Not me. |
| Cold fusion |
2036 |
Hmmm. Not much to base my assessment here, I’m afraid. |
| Virtual tourism |
2041 |
You can have the full experience of travel, without leaving a facility. Not just as “an experiment”, but as actual replacement for tourism… I don’t how attractive this will ever become. |
| Interplanetary human travel |
2071 |
Ditto |
If all this is true (and it certainly isn’t), there are some rather funny consequences. For example, this would imply that in 15 years we will have cured cancer and have self-driving vehicles, yet our home would not yet be fully automated. Also, if much of this plays itself out as suggested, the next two decades are going to be extremely exciting, don’t you think?
I’m the first to admit that this table certainly has many errors and omissions. In fact, this is not a set of concrete predictions so much as it is a straw man for you all to tear up and suggest corrections.
Please, help identify notable omissions and correct these estimates, and perhaps our collective wisdom will provide better insight into our future.
Crowdfunding – the notion of funding “something” by collecting funds from the crowd, is not new. Philanthropy has many such examples and 3 years ago, Barack Obama’s campaign for presidency was an astonishing example of how it could become extremely effective. By some accounts, there are over 150 web sites that support various forms of crowdfunding.
My plunge into crowdfunding occurred a few months ago.
Let me tell you the story:
It’s quite a challenge to add to the plethora of CES 2011 blogs. This post puts together some of my key observations. I didn’t touch on everything I saw and might have even missed key insights, so it’s not “the definitive” guide to anything CES. The show is huge and there were over 140,000 people there, so it wasn’t easy to catch all the action. But I did see a lot, and gain some insight along the way:
Updated on January 7, 2011: Thanks to feedback, it has come to my attention that there were some errors in the original post, for which I apologize. I therefore updated the post to correct these errors. As always, this blog reflects my views and opinions and does not necessarily reflect opinions of anybody else. I am personally responsible for any errors I make, and therefore am glad to correct.
When people talk about Apple’s success with the iPhone, they attribute some of it to the huge success of the Apple App Store that has over 300,000 applications that were downloaded over 7 billion times (as of Oct 20, 2010).
Apple’s App Store is bigger, in terms of numbers, than any other mobile application store. But this provides only part of the picture. I think there are actually three key ingredients to Apple’s success with the iPhone – together they make up what I now call “appcessories“:
Continue reading “Appcessories” are key ingredients to Apple’s success
Last week – what most predicted – has finally happened: Android passed Apple iPhone in global units sold. This was no surprise. Google’s Android has a much more effective distribution mechanism than Apple’s iPhone. Apple’s iPhone is made by one manufacturer, Apple, and in the US, is only distributed by one service provider – AT&T. On the other hand, Google’s mobile operating system, Android, runs on many hardware manufacturers’ devices (HTC, Motorola, Samsung and others) and is distributed by many service providers in almost every region. It was just a matter of time until this strategy paid off for Google.
This raises the question: Will Android do to the iPhone what Windows has done to the Macintosh? More specifically, will Android make iPhone a niche solution? Even though the Mac was the first successful computer to have a graphical user interface and a mouse, Microsoft came from behind with Windows and reduced the Apple Macintosh computer to about 4% market share. It did so by making Windows practically ubiquitous – distributed by practically all other PC manufacturers.
Is Google Android going to do the same to the iPhone? All early indications are that it will.
The iPhone is now more than 3 years old. I love my iPhone (and my iPad). I’m still on my 3GS, after going through the original iPhone (2G) and the iPhone 3G, and awaiting an opportunity to get the iPhone 4. I seemed to think almost anybody could benefit from an iPhone as their main mobile communication and computing device. So while I understand why all people don’t have one quite YET, it surprises me from time to time when people tell me it’s simply not for them. It’s not that they are waiting for a particular feature – they claim that they will not want an iPhone EVER.
That got me thinking: why are these (otherwise intelligent) people so dead set on NEVER having an iPhone? So I asked them about their reasons. It turns out some of them are due to misunderstanding. They are unaware that the iPhone can do what they want or has a perfectly usable alternative way to do the job. But some reasons are more real and permanent.
So here are the dozen explanations I got for why these people claim they will NEVER have an iPhone (in no particular order), along with whether I see this reason as real or imagined, and why. While it might seem like I invented some of these reasons, I assure you that all of these are actual responses I’ve gotten from people I’ve asked.
Continue reading Why some people THINK they will NEVER get an iPhone
Since the iPad was announced on January 27, people immediately started asking (and answering) the question: “what will happen to Kindle and eReaders?” And since the iPad became available in April 2010, many have been putting those questions to the test. Most recently, Amazon completed porting their Kindle application to a wide variety of popular devices, now including Android, and came out with the new Kindle DX. Continue reading The Kindle is Dead, Long Live the Kindle!
Since the Consumer Electronics Show back in January 2010 we’ve all been inundated with announcements suggesting 3D will quickly move from the cinema to our TV at home. 3D viewing isn’t new – stereoscopy was patented as early as 1838, and 3D has hyped time and time again, most notably in the 1950’s. The consumer electronics industry is trying to recreate the success of HD, now for 3D, based on the cinematic revival of 3D of recent years.
And indeed, since January, many 3D TVs were brought to market, TV networks and programs in 3D are about to be broadcast, and most notably, the world cup is now broadcast in 3D, and there’s still more to come. Some consider 3D much more important to consumers than the HD transition. So why, despite all these rosy predictions, do I believe that 3D TV will not take off nearly as quickly, if at all? Why am I betting against the experts on this one?
Continue reading A dozen reasons why 3D TV will not take off as planned
