2006 Predictions… How’d I Do?
Last January I made some predictions about what I expected to see in the world of technology in 2006. This was my first attempt at public crystal ball gazing, and looking over my prognostications now I’m struck by one overriding lesson: everything takes longer than you expect. For the most point I think I had the trends nailed, but they didn’t make as much progress as I had expected over the past twelve months. Nonetheless, let’s take a look at how I fared:
The first real mainstream DRM backlash will take place, as consumers realize that music they have bought on various online stores doesn’t play anymore when they buy an MP3 player from another vendor. Apple will make a gesture towards interoperability but try to hold onto its proprietary advantage as long as possible.
There have been some rumblings about Apple’s DRM policies, but this couldn’t really be considered “real mainstream DRM backlash.” It seems that Apple’s FairPlay is inobstrusive enough (and the alternatives heinous enough) to keep the average consumer happy for the time being. Perhaps it will take a real competitor to the iPod to drive home the fact that iTunes customers don’t actually own the music that they’re buying.
Portable electronic reading devices will begin to make their presence known, and it will finally dawn on forward-thinking publishers that their current business model (subsidizing their online offering by selling pulped dead trees) is doomed to extinction.
I’m giving myself this once since I only claimed that said devices would “make their presence known.” While at FooCamp last August I attended a session about the electronic reading devices where an iLiad was passed around the room to illustrate the concept. The assembled geeks were fawning and drooling over the gadget as if Jessica Alba had just walked into the room in a string bikini. I’m not geeky enough to have ogled the device’s input/output ports until someone finally snatched it out of my hands, as some of those present did, but I have to admit it’s pretty darn sexy. The price tag is still too high for mass-market adoption, and the current software apparently has some significant lacks, but electronic text readers are going to start making an impact very soon.
Google will stumble as it struggles to cope with hypergrowth and move beyond its advertising-dominated business model. Its stock price will be lower at year end 2006 than it was when the year began.
On January 3rd, 2006 (the first weekday of the year) GOOG was at 435.23. Since the stock stands at 460.48 today, I was wrong about this, strictly speaking. Nonetheless, the price was at 471.63 when I made the prediction, and that’s what I actually meant. Really, I swear. Also I was right that Google is struggling to extend its business model beyond advertising, and I seem to see an article a day recently about how the company is fighting to deal with the implications of its rapid growth. It’s my blog, and I’m taking half-credit on this one, so there!
Firefox will break the 20% barrier in browser market share, in large part due to bundling agreements with PC manufacturers.
Wrong again. Firefox apparently started the year at 9.5 percent and rose to 14 percent. More to the point, the expected bundling deals simply didn’t happen. I don’t realize understand why not, but I guess that hardware manufacturers are still pretty afraid of Microsoft, and thus relunctant to get into bed with its perceived competitors. Here’s hoping this will change in 2007!
At least one application based on Mozilla’s nascent XULRunner platform will achieve widespread adoption.
Wrong, on the surface. At least I can’t think of any application that fits this description. But the forthcoming Venice Project is based on XULRunner and it seems very likely to achieve widespread adoption. So I wasn’t far off. Half credit again.
Despite competition from Digg and other upstarts, Slashdot will remain the king of geek news sites in 2006. Their community and moderation system are simply too well-developed to be easily duplicated. But if they’re smart (note the hedging) they will start to dip their toe in the murky waters of community-driven story selection, perhaps by setting up a special “readers’ picks” page.
What can I say, I gave Slashdot too much credit here. And by the look of things, they’re paying the price.
So what’s that, 2 out of 6? I don’t think Nostradamus will be losing any sleep, but an interesting exercise nonetheless. The bottom line is, when predicting the future be very conservative. And then tone it down a bit. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when posting my 2007 predictions.
3 Comments »
Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Wrong, on the surface. At least I can’t think of any application that fits this description. But the forthcoming Venice Project is based on XULRunner and it seems very likely to achieve widespread adoption. So I wasn’t far off. Half credit again.
So how about Songbird then? Songbird is quite widespread… Even though I don’t use it
Comment by Lulu — 1/3/2007 @ 1:20 pm
Songbird is definitely cool. Does anyone know how many downloads they have to date?
Comment by Matt — 1/3/2007 @ 6:29 pm
CNet’s download site at http://www.download.com/3000-2141-10619969.html has had about 30,000 downloads since Dec. 19.
Comment by Erik Staats — 1/14/2007 @ 4:12 am