Predictions for the technology hits of 2008

I think I did pretty well in my predictions for 2007, so here are some things I think will start to become big in 2008:

"small" computers

For some reason, even though technology is shrinking, the outward appearance of PCs hasn't changed since the early 90s. Although the classic ATX format has the increasingly popular microATX offspring, most PCs sold by Dell and PC World still retain the "big box" appearance of the tower case. In the old days this was due to the fact that everything, from a printer port to sound needed an add-in card. These days all these add-ins are integrated onto the motherboard itself. In fact, unless you want a graphics card for gaming there is no need for any add-in cards. Sadly at the moment these cards suck up a lot of power and generate a lot of heat which work best with large cases. Several years ago several companies - led by Shuttle - designed small form factor (SFF) systems utilising clever thermal management to enable modern processors and graphics cards to fit in small shoe-box sized boxes. The downsides were the cost and the amount of noise they generated (larger fans that are quieter don't physically fit). As the price of PCs fell dramatically, these systems looked even more expensive and now only Shuttle still offer a range of them and even these are getting bigger in an effort to support the latest, fastest graphics cards. In the last 2 years it has once again fallen to Apple - populiser of the MP3 player - to release the Mac Mini. This is a super small computer that runs almost silently. It achieves this by having an external power supply which doesn't need a cooling fan, use of special low power (but still quick) processor and integration of all the features such as graphics, sound, wifi, usb etc onto the motherboard. Apple have even managed to squeeze in a DVDR/W drive. But where to go from here? At Apple's Macworld conference later this month it is expected that a new Mac Mini will be unveiled - it may get a name change but it is expected to use the new Intel chipsets to further improve power efficiency and improve performance. If the performance is improved so that the new HD formats can be played from it, combined with Apple's desire to have a machine sitting under your TV from which you buy films from iTunes to watch on your TV, we may end up with a very capable (except gaming) weenie machine.

In the world of laptops too, prices have fallen significantly with once exception: lightweight laptops. If you don't mind lugging round 3 kg of laptop then you can get a decent one for £400, but if you want true portability the price rockets to around £1000. That was until Asus came out with the EEE PC. Made from old chips that Asus got for cheap, the laptop is close to 1 kg and costs only £220. People may scoff at the specs - a Celeron 900 processor that is underclocked, a 7" screen and only 4Gb of storage but they're missing the point. You can install Windows on it and the hard drive is a solid-state drive which is much faster than a traditional hard drive. The included Linux system boots in 15 seconds. The storage can be boosted with USB sticks or SD cards (which go upto 32 Gb these days). There's a built in webcam and microphone, vga output and wifi built in so the EEE PC is a truly mobile PC. The device has been so popular that it was sold out for most of December. This means that other manufacturers will take notice and begin to prep their own microlaptops. In the next few days Asus will be releasing details about their 2nd gen EEE, rumoured to include an 8.9" 1024x600 screen (compared to a cramped 800x480 on the original) and built in wireless broadband (WiMAX in the US and perhaps HSDPA in the EU).

I'm not that hopeful that small PCs will catch on this year, but the EEE PC will ensure people start to take notice.

E-paper

I mentioned this in my review of last year's predictions. It consists of a layer of balls that are white on one side and black on the other. Applying voltage across them cause them to align. Thus you can create images. The displays are bistable - they only consume power when they are changed so once an image has been set it will remain that way even when the batteries run out. At the moment the technology is used for text-based displays. The Motorola F3 is a cheap, long-lasting mobile phone and things like the Sony Reader promise to revolutionise the book. E-paper is much easier to read, appearing like regular paper - it isn't backlit so it doesn't strain your eyes over long periods. The Sony reader allows you to download books and store them on SD cards (you can fit a lot of books into 1 Gb). The device itself is about the same size as a paperback book and you navigate through books by "turning" pages. The technology has an ~1 second response time and the display resets to white before the new page appears. This has put a lot of people off, but it is reported that, just like physically turning a page, you stop noticing it. The device isn't currently available outside of the US, but the idea of this and a little box of SD cards is much more in line with my minimalist life idea. Amazon US recently released the Kindle - a similar kind of device which proved very popular in the US so the interest is there.

The next big thing to happen is flexible E-paper. This uses the same system, but whilst the TFTs that drive the current range of E-paper are based on silicon and therefore inflexible, several companies, including Cambridge's Plastic Logic, have created printable plastic TFTs that allow for flexible devices - a prototype of which is shown below.



I've a more advanced prototype in the flesh and it's very impressive. It is envisioned as being a business tool at first to allow the displaying of email attachments and to receive newspapers via a wireless subscription. The newspapers lost out in a major way to the onset of the internet which they didn't perceive as a threat, so they're not going to make the same mistake with E-paper. Plastic Logic have built an assembly plant in Dresden and the first products are expected to hit the shelves next Christmas so flexible readers could be a big hit in 2009!. The other big development is colour with several companies reporting successful laboratory tests.

Eventually these designs will be scaled up - imagine the giant advertising boards; instead of having a team of workmen to replace the posters one bit at a time, just upload a new image and they automatically update and once updated, they consume no power until they need to be changed again.

Personal GPS

It was a bit of a no-show last year - the technology was there but manufacturers chose to disable the feature. Logic dictates that this is simply so they can enable GPS in the next handsets that will launch in May/June and immediately create desire for the new models. The real driver though will be if the 2nd Apple iphone incorporates GPS (which it almost certainly will) - ever since the iPhone was announced, we've seen a slew of touch screen phones released, but none have matched the iPhone's specs (HVGA resolution and a multitouch screen) so companies are clearly influenced by Apple. At the moment GPS is a high end feature (such as the N95, Tytn II, Touch Cruise) but it will certainly filter down to the mainstream handsets this year and with it we'll see many more GPS-applications such as texting friends your location and navigating using Google maps or simply tagging photos with GPS coordinates. Now a GPS chip costs $1 so there really isn't any excuse.

Splashpower

I've been following this company on and off for several years now but it seems like 2008 could finally be the big year for them. They have developed a way of charging electronic devices by electromagnetic induction. How this works is that you plug a mousepad sized pad into the mains and then simply place items on it to charge - there is no need to plug in anything other than the pad. They claim a power efficiency of >90% and that charging speed is independent of the number of devices on the pad. It certainly sounds appealing as things like remote controls, MP3 players, phones and every other portable battery containing device could be sold without an AC adaptor. No doubt some people will say it's a return to the days when electrical items came without plugs, but it should drop the cost of the items in the first place and smaller, portable pads should be available for travelling - but if it really takes off, then hotels and the like will probably provide pads in-room. It should also help cut down the amount of wasted power attributed to phone chargers left plugged in 24/7. Eventually devices will come with compatible batteries already installed, but until then adaptors will be made available. It's taken the company a long time to get anything to the market and I think it's down to negotiating with companies to make their devices compatible. Splashpower are demonstrating their stuff at CES next week so hopefully we'll finally get a release date for the pads.

Smart cards

I touched on this last year with my prediction that contacless payment cards would take off. That didn't quite prove true unless you live or work in the city of London where the system was fully rolled out. This time around I'm predicting the rise of smart cards in general. Whilst the Oyster card has ensured that smart cards will always have a place in the UK, the rest of the country is so far missing out. This is set to change this year as Oyster-like cards are to be rolled out on the Birmingham transport system - this year for buses and next year for trains - it's a system that makes a massive amount of sense as it will cut fare-dodgers and speed upto the endless queues at New Street at peak times. The first to benefit will be the OAPs - including my parents - who will receive their free buses smart cards this Easter. It'll probably be the first time my parents have ever been at the front of a technology roll-out. In addition to this the wave and pay trials should reach out to the rest of the country by the end of the year. How popular it will be I don't know - it depends on retailer take-up. Of course, anyone applying for a passport will get a form of smart card in the form of the new RFID passports which is in itself a form of smart card. The plastic electronics industry is still trying to get the cost of a printed RFID tag under 1 cent before they start to challenge the old-skool barcode - don't expect that to happen this year.

Also keep an eye out for converging personal devices: The new iPod touch is simply and iPhone without the phone part (it still has the internet facilities) or another way of looking at it is that the iPhone is a slightly lower capacity iPod (16 Gb vs 8 Gb). Expect to see the 2nd gen iPhone sport HSDPA, built in GPS, and 16 Gb flash memory. And a high price. The iPhone hasn't taken off in the UK as we're not used to paying so much for phones - an iPhone costs £900 in all including the contract. The US are used to getting didged for phones so they lapped it up.

Results of my futurology predictions

Right so it's been a year since my first go at futurology so let's see how I did...

Digital photo frames

They certainly have increased massively in popularity (if not quality). The main sticking points seem to be non standard aspect ratios (some are 16:9, some are 4:3 some are 3:2) so the pictures require formatting or people will look odd, high power requirements so most will only work from the mains. The prices have come down and it's been possible to get a 7" screen for around £35. They are popping up in more and more places and are appealing to a much broader market than before. Their popularity will only increase and slowly but surely larger versions (upto 12") are making their way onto the market. The next evolution will come with the development of e-ink. With this technology displaying a picture uses no energy - energy is only used to change the picture. There'll be more about this later. Black and white e-ink products are already on the market and colour-displays have been prototyped. I'll have more about e-ink in my predictions for 2008.
Result: partly successful

Contactless payments

The wave and pay system has been rolled out in London, but in a much smaller area than predicted: it is really only useful within the city, but it will be rolled out further over 2008. Travel anywhere on the tube and you will see ads for the Barclay One-pulse credit card that combines wave and pay with an oyster card so this may well become very popular in London this year. For the rest of the country however I'm not sure how long it will take as the banks are only planning to issue 5m cards this year and HSBC in Durham didn't even have any details of any north east trials.
result: predicted too early

HSDPA

A bit hard to tell what to think of this one. Most 3G phones released this year have been HSDPA-enabled. Pretty much all the phones released since May are capable of connecting to the net at 3.6Mbps which is almost as fast as the average UK broadband speeds. The speeds are set to double to 7.2Mbps (and maybe even 14.4Mbps) in 2008 and indeed over the summer most of the UK phone networks began to take mobile data access a lot more seriously. Certainly 3, Vodafone and T-mobile offer USB HSDPA modems for accessing the internet from a laptop anywhere with a mobile phone signal and all the networks have launched "unlimited" data packages to connect to the internet from your phones. The term unlimited varies wildly with 3 being the most generous offering 1Gb of data for £5/month, followed T-mobile offering 1Gb for £12.50/month (The cheaper £7.50 option apparently is fixed at a much slower speed than HSDPA is capable of), O2 allow 200Mb for £7.50/month and Vodafone offer 120Mb for £7.50 whilst Orange bring up the rear demanding £8/month for a paltry 30Mb. So once again, we have the facilities to make a massive jump forward in information access, but only if we're prepared to pay for it. Expect HSDPA routers to become a lot cheaper in 2008 and perhaps higher data allowances.
result: success - but who will pay for it?

Personal GPS

Now I will admit defeat on this one. Sales of in car, stand-alone GPS units must have gone through the roof this year with the big brand, Tomtom, finally breaking under the £100 barrier putting it in the realm of impulse purchase. However, my prediction was about personal GPS ie built into mobile phones. At the moment you get the best from sat-nav if a mobile phone is involved cos the phone can download traffic updates and send them to the main unit via bluetooth which will then seamlessly direct you around traffic jams. I can see the bigger companies like Tomtom integrating a sim card into new in car units and do this without the need for a phone or data charges (much like the Amazon Kindle reader does with books). But back to my prediction that most mobile phones would have GPS in them by the end of the year. It was looking good, the N95 launched with GPS and even a lower end Nokia 6110 had GPS. All the new HTC phones were run my the Qualcomm 7200 chip that includes, among other things, built in GPS and wifi. Sure enough all the new phones (Tytn II, Touch Dual and S730) were shown with fully functioning GPS and wifi, but for some reason the final devices lacked GPS (Touch Dual and S730) and wifi (Touch Dual). The phones good switch these functions on, but HTC had removed the antennae making the features useless. This seems a bit odd as it would increase the appeal of the phones. Furthermore the follow up to the very successful K800i, the K850i - widely rumoured to have GPS - was released GPS-less. The cynical would say that the GPS features were only disabled to provide the ability to release "upgraded" models in 6 months. The years big release, the iPhone was also GPS-less so this perhaps took the pressure off other manufacturers. I'll extend this prediction to next year.
result: failed due to lazy companies

Wii

Here's the unmitigated success of my predictions. It wasn't easy to find a Wii after Christmas. I kept missing stock refreshes online and most batches sold out within minutes. I finally got my Wii in late January and it was fantastic. The demand kept up and Wiis were hard to come by until the summer and suer enough once Christmas rolled around again they were once again nowhere to be found. It's not just the UK, in the week before Christmas 1.5 million Wiis were sold around the world - that's 1.5 million in a week. The only thing more popular was the DS lite which sold over 2 million in a week. By comparison the PS3 sold around 600K and the PSP sold 725K. Take that Sony. It seems the combination of a low (well-ish) price and broad appeal have hit a nerve. I heard stories of people's parents buying Wiis and having Wii parties with their friends. While there was a dearth of party games, Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 3 and the sublime Super Mario Galaxy ensured it catered to the gamers too. As the bloggers favoured animated Gif below says - these Nintendo consoles are printing money (just as the PS3 eats it). Even though they're slightly creepy, they crack me up every time I see them.



The next year starts off with the release of Wii fit, complete with balance board, that Nintendo can use to cash in on the whole after Christmas exercise fad so expect the console sales to keep on accelerating away from the competition.



result: definitely a success.

I'll post my predictions for 2008 in the next couple of days.

Updates are coming

I know it's been over four months since my last update here, but I've been being sociable and haven't had the internet at home so updates have been dificult. They are coming in the next few days. In the mean time I wish everyone a happy New Year and all the best for 2008. I've also updated 4 months worth of photos to my Flickr account so click the link on the right to see them.