2007: The Year Ahead

thirtyfootscrew — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 13:00:59 +0000

Well, after about 4.5 seconds worth of thought I’ve decided to put my words where my mouth is (doesn’t sound right but you know what I mean) and say what I think is gonna go down in 2007, this time in no particular order…
Print Media Feels The Burn
I may be mildly premature with this one, but I can feel it in my bones – the carcinogenic newsprint will hit the fan sometime soon and I think 2007 will be the beginning. I’m sure print media has already had some reaction to the Internet and most of the UK broadsheets have pretty decent websites these days but for certain classes of publications I can foresee a major decline. For instance, I hardly buy gaming magazines these days for two main reasons, (1) the news is usually 3-6 weeks out of date by the time they go to print, (2) the reviews and articles are so full of marketing bullshit and rubbish games regularly get good reviews because the mag got an exclusive demo/interview/shag and finally (3) the demos are all downloadable now so why bother paying for them? I’m absolutely sure that those points apply to most monthly tech magazines and one other ‘primary factor’ in the decline is that newspapers / magazines are full of writers who write about things they barely understand. Have you read any ‘generic press’ articles about IT, gaming or technology lately? If you’re really interested in something (anything) then you’ll probably find a decent, articulate and well-informed blog / forum / news site on the web that’s 100 times better than some pokey journo trying to meet a deadline.

Nintendo Kick Ass
With the recent launch of the Wii and the massive public interest coming from traditional non-gamers I really think Nintendo are onto a winner (see: I Love My Wii) and Sony have still not really got their act together. I’m still not ready to predict final winner in the battle but by the end of 2007 I would not be surprised if Nintendo are on top.

Watching The Computer
People are going to spend much more time in 2007 pointing their LCD-hungry faces at computers this year than ever before. This includes consoles, high-def video players, IPTV, mobile TV as well as the traditional fare such as YouTube, Google Video and the web.

The Corporate World
After some relative calm I can see things turning bad for a major tech company this year, obvious choices would be people losing their identity such as AOL or Sun but perhaps it won’t be such a good year for people like Dell or Yahoo. I predict that a few more social networking sites will be acquired by media companies this year, possibly bebo or facebook – also predict it won’t do them much good.

Operating Systems
Last year started the war of next-generation consoles, 2007 sees the war between next-generation operating systems. With the release of WIndows Vista and later in the year Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) this does look like an interesting year, I also foresee more manufacturers offering pre-installed (or embedded) Linux than they have in the past. As for the outcome, obviously Vista will win but I’m even more sure that it will be plagued with bugs and security issues throughout the year. I do however still think that Apple will notch-up their market share somewhat in 2007 – from people holding out for Leopard and people who just want something solid, dependable and easy to use and have been slowly wooed by the iPod.

Well, that’s the lot – I wish my predictive mental offspring well as they try and navigate the great wide world, and if you should meet one whilst you’re traveling through 2007 please stop and say hello.

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2007: The Year Ahead