What will be the major changes in the gadget landscape over the coming year? Barring the unexpected — an Apple washing machine, say, or a Microsoft electric car — it's easier to be specific about 2011's developments than it is for most years.
First up is the continuing demise of the desktop computer, which is being driven, in a roundabout way, by the second megatrend — the inexorable growth of the tablet computer.
The big conceptual leap of 2010, the Apple iPad, was only the start of tablet mania. Within a few months, dozens of keyboard-less computers have surged on to the market, nearly all smaller than the tea tray-like iPad, with its 10in screen, and all with many attractions, such as a phone function, which the iPad currently lacks. The pads out there now range in size from 5in machines like the Dell Streak to 7in versions, notably the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
How does this affect the primacy of the traditional office desktop PC? Well, look around the aircraft on which you are now sitting. It would be an unusual flight if there weren't already one or two businesspeople who have ditched the heavy old laptop (or the too-small-to-be-useful netbook) and are doing all their on-the-move business stuff on a pad.
You won't enjoy writing long documents on a tablet, but for a few emails and for reading documents — plus entertaining yourself in any number of ways — it's a perfectly viable form of computer. It's also easier on your back, as pads are so much lighter than laptops.
The laptop, meanwhile, is becoming, I believe, the desktop replacement. Again, look around any office. And the desktop? Well, take a look on eBay, or even your local rubbish dump - there's normally a mountain of the things there.
The netbook, the mini-laptop breed of recent years, is suffering from the tablet onslaught, too. Data from Gartner and IDC recently showed a marked slowing of netbook sales attributed to the iPad et al. But one small trend bucking the iPad boom is the super-thin and super-expensive netbook, led by Apple's new MacBook Air 11-inch. Dell is also prowling around this genre, flying the flag for Windows users.
Megatrend number three will be the continuing convergence of phone and camera. A keen photographer myself, towards the end of last year I found myself making my first foreign trips without taking a camera. The reason? Both the still and video cameras on my iPhone 4 are so good and convenient that they did everything photographic that I needed. A lot of new phones, most notably the new Nokia N8, are even better.
The coming year will also be the year of 3D. Well, sort of. 3D in the cinema will continue to grow slowly — excitement has dropped off since the launch of Avatar a year ago — but there are plenty of people who will still pay extra for the depth element.
3D in the home will be the interesting area to watch. Sky's dedicated 3D channel will struggle, I fear, because of resistance to wearing 3D glasses at home. But a new factor could change that — a new breed of consumer 3D video cameras. Models from Sony and Panasonic made a gentle splash at last autumn's IFA technology fair in Berlin, and I expect more noise and more models at this month's Consumer Electronics Fair in Las Vegas. I have a feeling that producing your own 3D family films will finally prove the breakthrough for a technology that's been bubbling under for the best part of 100 years.
Another nascent trend set to surface properly in 2011 is Internet TV and the birth of entire TV channels from companies such as Google. At the moment, both the technical quality and the content are awful, but this will start to improve as broadband speeds get faster. And with Internet TV, the old-fashioned, and already terminally ill, concept of synchronous TV — everybody watching the same programme at the same time — will finally die.
The best of the rest? Well, ultra fast 100Mbps home broadband should be available by the end of the year, and we will become more and more connected through social networking, with the various services effectively merging. Anyone for TwitFace?
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