No Way to Predict Hot Apps, Gadgets of 2020, Experts Say

Technology experts surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project overwhelmingly agree that the killer applications and gadgets of 2020 can not be foreseen right now. About 80 percent of respondents said the killer apps of 2020 will "come out of the blue" and will not have been anticipated.

For all the scenaio planning, brainstorming and research firms conduct and pay for, that is a rather surprising opinion. Essentially, most technology observers and technologists say we have no way of predicting what will be hot in 2020. That will not stop firms from creating product roadmaps and investing where they think the opportunities are greatest.

Despite all that, we still are likely to be surprised in 2020. In 2000, nobody would have predicted the iPhone, or perhaps have bet that Apple would be a bigger company than Microsoft. The first is fact, the second "only" a directional trend. Microsoft today still is a bigger company than Apple, at least in terms of market value. But the charts suggest Apple will overtake Microsoft.

How many forecasters would have predicted that?

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Bing Maps Augmented Reality Demo

I admit I use Google Chrome and Firefox more than I use Explorer and Bing. I use Google Maps; I don't use Bing Maps. But that doesn't mean Microsoft engineers are not working on new tweaks to provide more value for Bing and its related apps.

RIM, Apple, Google Grow in Smartphones, Microsoft and Palm Drop

Over the last three months, Research in Motion, Apple and Google have gained smartphone market share, while Microsoft and Palm have lost share, comScore says.

42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November 2009 to January 2010 period, up 18 percent from the August through October period.

RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 43percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, rising 1.7 percentage points versus three months earlier. Apple ranked second with 25.1 percent share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft at 15.7 percent, Google at 7.1 percent (up 4.3 percentage points), and Palm at 5.7 percent.

Google’s Android platform continues to see rapid gains in market share.

In an average month during the November through January 2010 time period, 63.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.5 percentage points versus three months prior.
Browsers were used by 28.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 1.8 percentage points), while subscribers who played games made up 21.7 percent (up 0.4 percentage points). Access of social networking sites or blogs experienced strong gains in the past three months, growing 3.3 percentage points to 17.1 percent of mobile subscribers.

Social networking now is more popular than listening ot music, at least where it comes to mobile device activities.

Apple is Going to be Bigger than Microsoft

Based largely on the strength of its position in the mobility space, Apple seems close to closing what once was an impossibly-large gap in equity value, compared to Microsoft. In 2000, Microsoft was about 600-percent larger than Apple, in terms of market capitalization.

One can argue it is the strength of the iPhone product line, or Apple's better positioning in the mobile business overall, that accounts for the change in market value. Long gone is the time when Apple was a PC supplier and Microsoft dominated the PC operating system market.

The difference between 2000 and 2010 was that where the 1990s might still have been an era of PC-based computing, the 2000 period saw the emergence of the Internet as the key factor in the computer-mediated experience business. Between 2010 and 2020 we are likely to witness yet another evolution based on mobility.

Unless Apple stumbles, or Microsoft somehow can discover a new and heightend role n mobile experience computing, Apple is going to be a bigger company than Microsoft. Market capitalization is not the only important measure of a company's stature, of course.

But Apple quitely has amassed a patent portfolio larger than Google's. Based largely on the strength of its position in the mobility space, Apple seems close to closing what once was an impossibly-large gap in equity value, compared to Microsoft. In 2000, Microsoft was about 600-percent larger than Apple, in terms of market capitalization.

One can argue it is the strength of the iPhone product line, or Apple's better positioning in the mobile business overall, that accounts for the change in market value. Long gone is the time when Apple was a PC supplier and Microsoft dominated the PC operating system market.

The difference between 2000 and 2010 was that where the 1990s might still have been an era of PC-based computing, the 2000 period saw the emergence of the Internet as the key factor in the computer-mediated experience business. Between 2010 and 2020 we are likely to witness yet another evolution based on mobility.

Unless Apple stumbles, or Microsoft somehow can discover a new and heightend role n mobile experience computing, Apple is going to be a bigger company than Microsoft.

Of course, market capitalization is not the only measure of a company's stature and influence. In that regard, Apple has been especially active in the patent filing arena. Between 2004 and 2007, when Apple was preparing the iPhone, it filed 507 patents, while Google filed just 67, for example.

Very few--in fact virtually none--of the leader's in one era of computing also were leaders in the next era of computing. Apple might be the first firm in computing technology ever to manage leadership in more than one era. Or, one can argue that Apple did not lead in the PC era, and is emerging now as a leader in the coming mobile Internet era because it has become a mobility company.

Right now, I can only think of three possible contenders for such history-making: Apple, Google and Cisco.

Google to Leave China?

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to the Financial Times.

Google's search results are censored in China, as are results provided by all other search engines as well.

Google is also seeking ways to keep its other operations in China going, although some executives fear that a backlash from the Chinese authorities could make it almost impossible to keep a presence in the country, the Financial Times says.

But Google’s executives have made it clear that they still hope to stay in the country, whatever the fate of Google.cn. “It’s very important to know we are not pulling out of China,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, told the Financial Times at the time. “We have a good business in China. This is about the censorship rules, not anything else.”

The company’s other operations, which pre-date the launch of Google.cn four years ago, include its research centre in Beijing and a sales force that sells advertising on the Chinese-language Google.com search service, based outside China, to advertisers inside the country.

This sort of issue has been tough for any companies doing business in China, in the past. Software and hardware sold by companies into China can, and are, used in ways that violate sensibilities in the West. Suppression of dissent, spying on citizens and so forth do happen in China, and technology supplied by Western firms is used to do so.

Google might have to take steps that many would agree are principled and just, but will harm its business interests. Similar thorny decisions have been made by other software and hardware suppliers to the Chinese market, with different outcomes. It's an area of moral tension executives cannot escape, though most seem to prefer not to talk about it.

Beyond all that, the dilemma shows that the old Internet, where any user could communicate freely with any other user, is gone. When the any government shuts down applications people use to communicate with each other, the old Internet is gone.

Financial Times article

The Creative Age is Different, Way Different

General Motors isn't Facebook. Heck, it isn't even Cisco or Microsoft. But neither are any of those companies like Facebook. I don't mean "like Facebook" in financial, social or cultural terms. Facebook is unlike other companies in the way that it creates a product. Most companies create products using some combination of internal resources ("employees") and business partners ("suppliers").

Most companies can tell you who "works for the company" and who does not. What is different about Facebook, and Wikipedia, Google and YouTube is that the "product" is produced by all sorts of people, both inside a "company," inside its "partner suppliers," and from "outside the company." What makes Facebook's product different is that "users" must participate to create a better and more useful product.

That might be true for any sizable organization, to some extent. Consumers help shape products when they decide to buy some more than others, and some not at all. Consumers help products evolve when they start to use products in new and unexpected ways.

But Facebook and others with a "social" product cannot develop with passive or secondary input. They require active creation of content, links and networks by participants. Not every product can be produced in this way. But it is a so-far distinctive attribute of products produced in a "post-information age" era.

Some might call the upcoming era the "creative" era, to differentiate it from the information age. Collaboration is a key cultural attribute of firms that create social products. Facebook depends on users, developers to create its product, which is an experience.

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More Evidence of How Hard it Is to Replicate Google's Success

It's an impressionistic, but useful take on Google's uniqueness among companies, that so few ex-Googlers have been able to replicate Google's success. Googlers are smart, there is no question about that. But Microsoft and many other firms go out of their way to hire "smart people." That fact alone does not seem to automatically produce out-sized results.

Think you can be the next Google?