high-speed Internet access, an intuitive tactile interface, speakers, microphone, and camera in devices like the iPhone and HTC Hero means that we can layer virtual reality over actual reality in ways hitherto unimaginable. Would you like X-Ray vision to see through the walls of the building you are looking at? If someone previously took a photo of the inside and geotagged it to the location you’re standing at, you can! Shazam! You now have X-Ray vision, just like Superman. How about ESP? Want to know what to order at the restaurant you’re in? Take out your phone and see if anyone has left reviews tagged to your current location. You can magically know that the steak is amazing while the duck stir-fry leaves something to be desired. Bingo! You have ESP! The iPhone was the first to combine all of these abilities in a single userfriendly device, but Android caught up by the end of 2009 and there will be yet others in 2010 and beyond.
not surpassing) the user experience of the iPhone, we could have a new king in Smartphone Land in 2010.
4 The rise of the open web A few years ago the web appeared stagnant with a beleaguered and ineffective W3C seemingly going round in circles while wrapped up in mountains of red tape. Today, nothing could be further from the truth. A freshly invigorated and hungry web community is ploughing ahead with a new suite of technologies – including HTML5, JavaScript 1.5, and CSS3 – to redefine the state of the possible on the web using open web technologies alone. The mobile world has also caught on to the importance of the open web (and the dangers of walled gardens as demonstrated by Apple’s draconian grip over its App Store). Efforts like WebOS from Palm and frameworks like PhoneGap are leading the way in bringing the open web as a first-class citizen to mobile platforms. This trend is only going to gather more strength and visibility in 2010.
2010 will see Augmented Reality applications reach critical mass. On the desktop, 2010 will be the year of the web-only operating system, with Google’s Chrome OS being the most highly anticipated of several new entries into the burgeoning arena.
3. The rise of Android The iPhone has been the one-hit wonder of the Smartphone industry, standing unrivalled since its launch two years ago. But now there’s a new 500-pound gorilla encroaching on its turf with a fighting chance of toppling it from its throne: Google Android. Unlike the iPhone, Android is not a single phone but a mobile operating system that runs on a variety of handsets by HTC, Motorola, etc. Depending on how much segmentation Google creates, this could be both an advantage and its Achilles’ heel. If the segmentation negatively affects the user experience, the iPhone will maintain its dominance. However, if Android continues to introduce revolutionary services like Google Goggles (which lets you search for real-world things simply by taking a photo of them with your phone) and concentrates on matching (if
Expect to see Flash, Silverlight, and other proprietary technologies lose valid use cases and adoption as the open web goes from strength to strength in 2010.
5. The waning of Flash HTML5 is not a Flash killer. Unity 3D is not a Flash killer. Silverlight is not a Flash killer. The iPhone and Android are not Flash killers. Combine all of these technologies, however, and you can see why Flash is in trouble. Where Flash has no single direct competitor, it is ambushed on all sides by a hungry hyena pack of different technologies. On the low end, hardware accelerated animations in the open CSS3 standard, mature JavaScript frameworks like JQuery, and the new media features in HTML5 make it possible to create the type of highly-interactive web sites that were previously the exclusive domain of Flash. On the higher 21