Predictions for 2010

Looking back at my 2009 predictions, I was hit and miss. I think I’ll do better this year (and make fewer predictions).

I missed on a lot of the renewable energy stuff – wind is definitely getting going with lots of agreements and more work being done on transmission infrastructure, and solar is hurting and didn’t get any sort of comeback this year. Large deals have been made but there isn’t a whole lot of upwards movement in the market.

Apple

• Apple does, along with a few other companies, releases various 7-10″ tablets. (OK, at the time of publication this is a foregone conclusion, but when I wrote this in the middle of December it wasn’t). Apple’s cost the most, but you get the most (e.g. the App Store). Other tablets don’t have the battery life or applications to match up.
• Apple continues to see growth of 20-30% year over year in computer sales (this number will vary depending on how they categorize the “iSlate” – as a computer or a iPhone-ish device, or its own category).
• The iPhone does go Verizon in July (probably announced earlier), AT&T counter by offering tiered monthly data plans – $20 for 250MB or less, $30 for 1GB or less, $45 for anything over 1GB. They do the rate structure in such a way that there aren’t really overage charges, you just get moved into the next tier (if you use 1.01GB of data, its $45).
• AT&T’s network continues to suck and iPhone users continue to complain. Verizon’s iPhone helps but AT&T doesn’t seem to care too much about network performance.
• The iPhone does not go 4G (LTE or WiMax) in 2010. Its expected to go LTE in 2011 as Verizon gets 50 markets online and AT&T still sucks with HSPA 7.2Mb/s network.
• The iPhone does get bumped to 64GB/32GB/16GB for the same prices ($299/199/99). The 3G iPhone goes away and all phones are 3GS. It doesn’t look like a processor or RAM speed bump is in the cards, but there are some new (risky?) features that get added.

Tech

• LED LCDs dominate 2010. Internet connectivity becomes prominent as TV manufacturers push streaming video on demand services like Netflix and YouTube.
• 3D TVs are introduced but don’t get adopted. Avatar gets released in September as the first true 3D Blu-Ray disk, but since BR hasn’t taken off it doesn’t go anywhere.
• 2010 still isn’t the year of Blu-Ray. Its getting close though! Players are available at $99 by Black Friday and things start to pick up for the holidays. I’m still not sure if broadband speeds will increase fast enough to take Blu-Ray out completely.

Green

• Wind continues to dominate the green generation sector. Transmission projects also start to get under construction in the second half.
• Solar recovers a little. But the problem is that the people wanting to middle-scale solar (between 1MW and 10MW and not utilities) don’t have the money and cant get loans to do it. Where available, PACE (property assessed financing) helps individual home owners defray the cost of putting solar power on their own homes by adding the price into their annual property tax assessment for a low interest rate (4-5%), so even if they move the next owner is paying for it through property tax.
• Geothermal still gets little love. 20MW here and 10MW there. No magic increase that gets geothermal to be some huge part of generation.
• Biofuels and biomass start to transition into more mainstream. You see a lot of coal plants augmenting their coal-fired boilers with wood, trying to reduce net CO2 output.
• EVs (Volt, Leaf, etc.) don’t make that big of a splash in the personal transport market because they cant get out that many units because of battery production issues (producing the number of cells and modules necessary). The tech turns out to be solid, but its the cost and production issues. Its somewhat disappointing that the cars have so much promise and they have trouble making them in volume.

Other

• I figure out some way to get a girlfriend this year. No idea how long I manage to keep her, but I do manage to get one. I had one date in 2009, but 2010 is better.
• I don’t do all that well in the stock market.
• I manage to write an iPhone app for myself. Don’t know whether I publish it – if its the one I think I’m writing it wont get published because it uses private APIs.

And thats it. See you next year!