We humans seem to love two things in particular this time of year: lists and predictions. If we can get both in one shot, that’s even better.
Every year, Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service – a must-read for industry leaders and venture capitalists, offers his ten predictions for the upcoming year – and over the ten years that he’s been doing this, he has enjoyed a 94% accuracy rate.
What’s up for the upcoming year? According to Anderson, Apple will be fine, but not Samsung, and it may well be the Year of the Copiers, and the Copiers will be going after the Creators.
“Alibaba flourished in a protected garden, then made its money in NYC (meaning the IPO) – and now they’re going after Amazon. The global economy will shrink as Copiers grow and Innovators go away. The Copier isn’t as innovative as the Creator.”
As quantum computing is figured out, it’ll all move fast, thanks to neuromorphic chips.
“Elon Musk is worried and rightly so. Right now, we can unplug. What we have today is rinky dink in comparison, and the tools are pathetic.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE 10 PREDICTIONS YOU CAN BANK ON FOR 2015
- Digital currencies multiply, then will go nowhere. They need power and strength of governments behind them; not to mention armies.
Image credit: CC by The U.S. Army
- Personal health, fitness and medical devices merge The doctor-patient relationship begins an inevitable and irreversible shift in power and cooperation. We’ll see a new flood of watches, bands and jewelry. But intelligent clothing stays fashion-niched because of price and inconsistency. New goals for the device non-invasive measurement of blood pressure and glucose levels. And for the fanciful, creative visual displays of bodyscape, such as heart rate and galvanic skin response, perhaps even a lover’s proxy touch.
Image credit: CC by Intel Free Press
- Pattern recognition becomes the real goal of predictive analytics and a whole new ecology of tools and images begin to arrive in developers’ hands, setting the stage for a revolution in computing.
Image credit: CC by Stefan Erschwendner
- Security takes its rightful place in the CEO agenda and corporate spending on security reverses its current downward trend. The cost of building insecure internet is paying for security, and this is the year that all the tickets come due at once.
Image credit: CC by David Goehring
- VR remains exactly that – virtual. Everywhere except in gaming and in fringe entertainment. Just because Zuck has a good lunch date with Oculous doesn’t mean that the rest of the world hasn’t already taken a pass on this technology…for decades.
Image credit: CC by Maurizio Pesce
- Amazon stumbles as Jeff’s appetite finally exceeds his reach and customers are turned off by his megalomaniacal drive. The Fire phone debacle, hapless drone delivery scenarios, Hachette punishments all lead to a loss of customer and the investors’ confidence.
Image credit: CC by DonkeyHotey
7. Home networks finally get off the launchpad, and it turns out that all people want is low energy bills, TVs everywhere and a single remote. What they don’t want is talking refrigerators; things that don’t work; complexity replacing reliability; more nested menus instead of real buttons; dumb things talking to other dumb things or worst of all, hackable home networks. Samsung and Apple lead the pack in this race.
Image credit: CC by Mackenzie Kosut
- Apple Pay succeeds. With with mapping improved, micromapping driven by beacons, advertising dollars following beacon merchandising niche, locations provided by phones and beacons, the final transaction step now on hand with Apple Pay, Apple achieves the technical and market steps necessary for domination of retail and physical space services.
Image credit: CC by TheTruthAbout
- Encryption continues its exponential expansion everywhere – deeper, and end to end – a continuing major trend. Thank you again, Edward, for protecting us from China and Russia, as well as from ourselves.
Image credit: CC by Yuri Samoilov
10. Net neutrality survives the onslaught of US lobbyists. The carriers are thrown a slim bone of some kind, by old friend Tom Weaver.
Anderson did offer a few parting pearls:
“With Apple Pay, Apple will eat the world, not Google. Google is good at new ideas, but not product… Social networks are the fake economy – there are not enough real customers and money to support these things. Facebook takes two steps forward, then one step back. Facebook is too invasive, then tries to sell you something.”
As with most things in the tech world, time will tell.
Image credit: CC by Christian Scholz