Predictions For 2010 - What Are You Betting On?
The year has just turned to 2010 and it's time to do some predicting into the future on the most likely trends this year. While they may not be accurate nor hold true in the end, it's nice to get a feel for what people are predicting. I've got 6 predictions, some not so spectacular, others slightly more outside the possible reach.
The first one is a pretty obvious one based on the recent developments in the media world as well as the startups involved in this industry as well: online video will become a mainstream alternative for advertisers. This does not mean that online video itself will be watched in equally large amounts to regular television, but it will become an alternative and a possibility for advertisers. This essentially means that the industry itself will grow as a business and become an attractive platform for doing business.
Secondly, Android will continue to gain market share with new phones and improvements. This will create enough competition into the mobile market and the applications there. With Android growing in market share, Apple's attractiveness will lower as it loses the edge in the application business with long approval times and poor signal to noise ratio among the applications themselves. Nokia might be building up its possibilities in the application business along with the N900 and new phones they are releasing.
Thirdly, moving to some company specific predictions, Spotify will finally sign those deals to enter the US market. It will grow significantly and become a real alternative to other music services there. Artists will become more appreciative of its business model as play amounts increase world wide. Finally, Jonathan will still irritate those with free accounts to switch to the paid alternative.
Another Swedish powerhouse Videoplaza will sign more deals and become one of the most attractive startups in the region looking to expand to the US. They will also strengthen their foothold in Europe with new deals and offices.
Next to last, is my prediction with regards to the game business. Remedy Entertainment will launch Alan Wake during the summer of 2010. Slightly late, but still almost on time. This could become one of the most anticipated and successful games of the year coming from the region.
Lastly, a little out of reach perhaps, but startups and growth companies will raise their heads on the political radar. Politicians will become more appreciative of the effects of the startup ecosystem. This will result in more talks of easing the functioning of the ecosystem and hopefully result in concrete results in 2011.
So there, some more specific predictions and others on a bit more macroeconomic level. What are your comments? Are my predictions out of this world or feasible? Have I left out any obvious ones?
Photo by Eva the Weaver
Regards to online video becoming mainstream for brands -- talking to broadcasters with online properties and agencies, I do not believe it will happen. TV remains as the vehicle to build awareness and brand recognition, and online videos with shorter spots, problems related to UCG and small audiences will remain aa nice add-ons serving potentially a very small purpose in overall media plans.
Good points.
I think TV will keep its status as a brand builder, but online video might become a nice addition to building better conversions to the destination.
Sad to see TV watching going up all the time. Im guessing online videos and TV will go different ways. Online videos and TV will not converge in near future. We might be heading to a similar chaotic period which we had several years with mobile phones (and still pretty much have).
Definitely online videos will be even bigger thing after 2010, but Im also predicting that the chaos will continue. There is still lot of room to help video viewers to organize their watchving. YouTube seems like a Hotmail in its time. There is still room for new players.Therefore your choice of Videoplaza seems like a good bet. Now is a good time to start pushing those video related startups. Video will be a major content format in the future - but in a very different style than TV is today.
I agree with the Android thing. Allthough Im betting that 2010 will be a bad year for Nokia. Nokia is a production house for multi-model-market and trying to make just a few amazing smart phones will not be easy for them - and will not happen 2010, maybe not even 2011. Im hoping that they will put their software development machine together, but Im not betting on it. They should change direction and start pushing the Maemo - but even if they do, they would need a different attitude towards developing software application ecosystems. And im not talking about vision or concept design. Nokia needs to put their execution style into different shape.
Personally I would like to add three predictions to your list (from my field of course):
1) Social Media Monitoring will rise fast (lot of new players, lot of new integrations to different kinds of products/services)
2) Lightweight CMS systems will start making money (like Moogo and HammerKit) since the open source CMS market is not delivering their promises and there are lot of traditional companies starting to focus their attention to the Web as a marketing channel (SaaS CMS systems will get more market share in general)
3) SharePoint 2010 will be the new king of the market when it comes to collaboration platforms and services - and this will make the market interesting for many other collaboration players also (though SaaS products only) - and Im also hoping that we will get more players from Nordic countries to join the SharePoint ecosystem of addons and integrated products.
As a individual product prediction Im betting on Balancion to start their journey towards being the next Last.fm of personal financial monitoring/recommendation system (http://www.balancion.com).
Intuit is already what Balancion coud be. Balancion can become Intuit for the region, but becoming a global business won't happen. I'm also waiting for the time that the Nordic banks wake up to the fact that we could actually do more than pay our bills with a terrible UI on the web.
Online video will become big when the new media houses start their ascendance, which is soon given how big troubles and little innovation there is in the sector. Classic Innovators Dilemme in action. The next Bonniers and Schibsteds can emerge even from small developments. For example, I'm waiting for someone to buy all the quality blog networks and small sites (think more mature Indiedays type aggregators say in Sweden) and aggregate those in the same way AOL is executing their new strategy.
This is not at all what we see happening at Videoplaza. The traditional media are the ones really utilizing and extending their sales with online video. Online video is complementary to running on TV and the simple reason is you won´t get the full reach of a campaign (meaning those 15.30 year olds who´s watching online video instead of traditional TV). In Sweden the average DAILY viewing time for online video is more than 15 minutes making online video as big as the third largest broadcaster. 20 % of those who saw the big tv show Idol in Sweden saw it online and of course the advertisers have to foolow, maybe not with 30 sec spots but with other clever ads and utilize the possibilities of online video.
Another thing, online video advertising is looking to grab 3 % of the online adspend already this year in Sweden. Up from a bit less than 1 % last year.
When reading mr. Tolvanen's comment about Sharepoint, you should remind that mr. Tolvanen is working at Sininen meteoriitti, a company focusing on Microsoft technologies.
Please check another similar case (unfortunately in Finnish): http://vierityspalkki.fi/2009/12/18/kyttjkeskeisen-verkkopalvelun-suunnittelun-perusteet-tiivistelm-luotain-menetelmst/#comments
Valid point. I do work for Sininen Meteoriitti, as you can easily read from my website. My earlier reply (the linked article) applies also here. You are free to browse my LinkedIn network and my website to see all my connections. I do not hide my connections or employer details in any way. My background is with Oracle CMS systems, open source systems (Drupal, Alfresco,DotNetNuke, Liferay and so on) and SharePoint.
My current employer is focused in Microsoft technologies, but I do not work as a SharePoint consultant in Sininen Meteoriitti. We have a separate consulting unit which does technology neutral work for our clients (former Steerco). We do not claim to be neutral, but we try to be fair. For example currently my biggest clients have Oracle technology and open source systems.
My prediction about SharePoint is based on market knowledge from Finland and observations made by international consulting and analyst firms. SharePoint is in a very interesting situation currently since integrator firms do not really need to market SharePoint. Clients are asking about SharePoint. And therefore SharePoint often gets selected even though there would be better solutions - for example from open source market. Im actually quite often in a position where I end up advising my clients against SharePoint - and still they end up choosing it. Reasons vary from corporate IT strategy to flexible pricing models made by Microsoft.
Personally Im not a fan of Microsoft, but I do take seriously even those who I don't like. And SharePoint is such a strong player at the moment that you really have to take it into account. But there are a lot of scenarios where SharePoint is not the best fit. For example the web content management field. But like I said in my comment ... the collaboration market is the one where SharePoint is making the strongest play and that market is evolving fast.