How we doing on our 2008 mobile tech predictions?

Jk_icon_100pixToward the end of each year we offer up our predictions of what we think will be the big happenings in mobile tech for the next year.  We normally visit these predictions mid-year to see how we are doing but with all the big goings-on this year we forgot to do that.  Our motto is better late than never so let’s take a look at how we are doing so far with our mobile tech predictions we put out there last year.  We’ll do it by the same categories used in the predictions and we’ll try to be straight with our scorecard.

Smartphones.  The smartphone category this year has been dominated by the iPhone 3G.  There has been no other phone in history, other than the original Palm Treo, that crossed the geek/ regular consumer divide like the iPhone.  Say what you will about the iPhone 3G and its shortcomings, we still saw lines of people wanting to buy one months after the introduction.  HTC has continued to release Windows Mobile phones one after another with the Touch/ Touch 3D/ Touch Pro all making appearances.  Their continued dominance in the phone space was furthered by the recent introduction of the T-Mobile G1 "powered by Google" phone.

JK score:  PASS.  As our prediction stated:

Apple reinvented the smartphone market in 2007and will continue to steal market share from the big guys, WindowsMobile and Symbian.  We should see an iPhone with 3G added in 2008which will start grabbing the geeks who have held off so far.  Therumors are that Apple will be announcing the sale of the 5 millionthiPhone early next year and while that may be a bit inflated there is nodoubt that Cupertino has brought smartphone technology to themainstream consumer who never cared for it before.  Expect Apple tocontinue to ride the wave of the iPhone as international sales ramp upand US sales continue into 2008.  HTC will continue to be the prolificproducer of innovative Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs and sincethey have already begun a mainstream marketing campaign in the US latethis year we should start seeing their devices appear in the hands ofthe non-geek mainstream next year.  This will have the biggest impactin the Windows Mobile space than any other factor in 2008.  Next yearwill see the first handsets released by HTC and others running theGoogle Android OS. This will make a big splash in the news but notreally have an impact on the mainstream. Geeks will snap them up but noone else will.

Music players. The iPod is still the king in the music player space, no surprise about that.  Apple has produced incremental upgrades to the iPod line this year but nothing earth-shaking.  We haven’t seen Cupertino embrace DRM-less music other than the iTunes Plus versions of some songs in the iTunes store.  No other company has made any headway toward stealing some of Apple’s sales although we saw some nice upgrades for the Zune line from Microsoft.  That was probably too little too late however.

JK score:  Mostly PASS.  As our prediction stated:

Apple will continue to dominate the portablemusic player stage with iPods continuing to be sold right and left.The iPod Touch will become a huge seller in 2008 as mainstreamconsumers get exposed to TV ads worldwide.  Apple will start to getcompetition from deals for DRM-less music that will be rolled out bybig record labels.  The only serious competition to the iPod is theelectronic music download that you own, i. e. without DRM.  Because ofthis competition we may see Apple do something major in this area ifthey have enough clout to hit the big labels over the head in 2008.Zunes will continue to enjoy good sales as the subscription plan getsmore traction in the marketplace.

Notebook computers.  This has been the year of the netbook no question with someone releasing a new model seemingly every week.  It seems to be easy to release a netbook but difficult to get them shipping with a lot of models taking weeks and sometimes months to get production ramped up.  Most all end up shipping with 3-cell batteries but since those don’t offer long battery life many buyers are waiting for 6-cell versions to ship.  There is definitely a shortage of those.   While Linux has stood the netbook genre well it didn’t take long for consumers to make it known they wanted Windows so most netbooks today ship with Windows XP as an option.  Microsoft can’t be happy that netbooks have proven XP to be the "OS that wouldn’t die".   Apple has remained silent about the netbook and small notebook possibility for them even though it’s a common cry among the Apply faithful.  Lenovo has entered both the netbook and regular consumer space in a big way with a number of notebooks aimed at the regular folks.

JK score:  Mostly PASS.  As our prediction stated:

Next year will be the year of Linux asDell, Lenovo and others begin shipping Linux as a preconfiguredoption.  The Asus EEE PC and the OLPC have shown the OEMs how consumersare willing to give up some horsepower for a notebook that runs Linuxand that can be had for less than some smartphones.  This will continueand we should see some other OEMs enter into this mainstream marketsegment.  If we see some major advertising in this area it will explodein 2008.  Apple should introduce a 13-inch MacBook Pro early next yearbut I don’t think that alone will create big sales for them.  Thesub-notebook needs to have some extra technology to create buzz but Ithink it will just be the 15-inch MBP shrunk to 13 inches.  Notebooksales will continue at a higher pace than desktops as consumers votewith their wallets that they want plug and play.  Major OEMs like Delland HP will continue to introduce notebooks aimed at consumers andprices will continue to drop dramatically.  Now that Lenovo is donewith their transition from IBM with the ThinkPad we will see somestrides from them in the consumer space.  Notebooks will be the biggestsales sector in the PC market in 2008 easily.

UMPCs.  This category covers devices that meet certain physical criteria but nobody knows what that is.  Not having a clear definition of what makes a UMPC a UMPC has hurt the perception of how handheld devices can help the consumer no question.  This year we have seen more devices with keyboards, something we still feel hurts the usability of a mobile device like the UMPC.  UMPCs are toys for geeks as they still have not broken into the mainstream consciousness and are not available in big box stores.  This is likely because they are priced way too high for toys.  In spite of a continual cry by the public Apple is remaining out of this category and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

JK score:  Mostly PASS.  As our prediction stated:

This will continue to be a very unclear genre in2008.  The term has been applied to everything from the Vista-runningOrigami class devices to Linux notebooks and PDAs and that confusionwill continue to keep the OEMs from focusing on a clear ultra-mobilePC.  In the Origami camp I expect we will continue to see devices thatare considerable smaller than the 7-inch original reference design andthis will prevent mainstream adoption as these devices will virtuallyall have keyboards that are too small to be genuinely useful.  We canexpect to see more devices emerge with sub-5-inch displays that strivefor ultra-portability but still are not pocketable, something thatmainstream consumers will likely expect.  We’ll start to see Intel MIDsappear that will be cheaper and more battery-friendly than currentdevices which will be a welcome addition.  Dell’s addition of acapacitive digitizer such as that found in the iPhone could have a bigimpact in the UMPC space if OEMs start producing UMPCs with multi-touchability.  That could be a game changer in the UMPC space and will begreatto see if that happens in 2008.  Otherwise UMPCs running Windows willcontinue to be the fodder for geeks and mainstream consumers will stayaway in the same numbers they stayed away in 2007.  We may see a majorOEM introduce a device in 2008 with a new usage technology that shakesup this genre.  No, it won’t be Apple with a Newton device.  I hope Iam wrong about this but I do not believe Apple will introduce amini-Tablet as has been rumored recently.  I believe that Apple isalready spread too thin with their current varied product line and anew device like a Tablet would stretch them to the breaking point.  Ifthey did introduce something like this it would really knock the genrefor a loop.  Solid state disks (SSDs) will continue to appear in mobilePCs and will have a tremendous impact on battery life and performancebut will remain too expensive to appeal to mainstream consumers as thedevices that contain them will be too expensive.

Tablet PCs.  This year has been more of the same as years past with very little new and nothing exciting happening.  No big push into the consumer space has taken place although HP has produced decently priced "entertainment notebooks" that offer tablet functions.  We were spot on with the prediction that although Dell produced the first multi-touch capable Tablet PC it had no impact on anyone.  No other OEM has followed suit because they see what we see, there is just no compelling function that multi-touch adds to the Tablet PC.  The Tablet PC is a niche product pure and simple and this hasn’t changed at all.  The pure slate tablet is dead.

JK score:  PASS.  As our prediction stated:

Dell’s introduction of the XT Tablet PC with thecapacitive digitizer is the first innovation we’ve seen in this arenain a long time and unless they come up with a totally new use for thattechnology it might not make a splash at all.  Other OEMs will notfollow suit unless they have a compelling reason to do so and I can’tenvision what that usage might be so I don’t expect that to happen in2008.  I expect next year to be more of the same in this space with theexception that some of the major Tablet makers will start trying tosell them to consumers for the first time.  This could be a very goodthing as to date all Tablet PCs have been pretty much aimed at theenterprise but if consumers are targeted we could see sales ramp up.The convertible form factor with keyboards and swivel screens willcontinue to be the norm for Tablet PCs with fewer pure slates produced.

I’d say we did pretty well with our mobile tech predictions for 2008.  We have seen a lot of activity this year, mostly in the smartphone category and of course the netbooks we can’t escape from are all over the news.  They’re not all over consumer’s desks yet, just the news.  It’s still the biggest area of change we’ll see going forward as we’ll see these cheap little notebooks in big retail stores soon.

Of course it doesn’t matter how we score ourselves, it only matters how YOU score us so tell us how we did in the comments.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post