Jan Cronje took a look in his analogue crystal ball and came up with 10 trends to keep an eye on over the next 365 days.
1. Spike in phablets
According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC), sales of phablets, the midsized devices that straddle smartphones and tablets, will soar this year.
The IDC predicted that just under 1 of every 5 smartphones sold next year will be a phablet (the name is a combination of the words phone and tablet), roughly twice the ratio of last year.
2. Underwhelming wearables
Sales of “wearables” – a term that includes things like smart glasses and smart watches – will underwhelm.
“Innovation will explode, but unit sales will underwhelm,” said the IDC. But all is not lost. Analysts are bullish that wearables will become indispensable items some time in the future.
3. Growth in mobile payments
For more than a decade mobile payments have been touted as the next big thing in tech.
While mobile banking is commonplace, using your phone instead of cash or your bank card at the check-out counter has never really caught on.
It looked, like Marty McFly’s hoverboard in Back to the Future, to be something that humans couldn’t quite master.
But this may change this year.
Several companies, such as Apple with its Apple Pay app launched with the iPhone 6, are making innovative and intuitive mobile payment apps.
One is the South African- designed and developed SnapScan, created by Stellenbosch technology firm FireID.
According to Standard Bank, which supports the free app, over 12 000 business have signed up to offer payments using the technology, many in the Cape Town CBD.
4. The first wrist phone
For those champing at the bit to play James Bond with a true “wrist phone”, this year looks promising.
According to the IDC, it is on the cards that a major brand such as HTC, LG or Sony will develop a “wearable device with a full cellular stack designed to replace the mobile phone entirely”.
But the IDC predicted the first watchphones will misfire: “The device will be doomed by execution challenges”.
5. Falling smartphone prices
The trend of falling smartphone prices is expected to continue this year, largely because of competition between major manufacturers and the rapid growth of cheap, Chinese-manufactured phones.
“While premium phones aren’t going anywhere, we are seeing increasingly better specs in more affordable smartphones,” said the IDC.
“Consumers no longer have to go with a top-of-the-line handset to guarantee decent hardware quality or experience.”
The drop in prices – which mirrors the decade-long drop in the prices of laptop computers – is expected to continue until 2018.
6. A rise in 3D printing
3D printing, where the nozzle of a special printer lays down layer upon layer of material to create a solid object, is set to grow strongly this year, according to US technology research firm Gartner.
The company’s report, “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015”, noted that global shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 98 percent this year, as the technology becomes cheaper and more user friendly.
One of the under-the-radar success stories is that of the group Robohand, founded by South African Richard van As, which creates affordable mechanical limbs.
Not only has Van As fitted the devices to hundreds of disabled people, he has shared (some) designs on the internet.
7. More mobile apps
Mobile app downloads will hit an eye watering 150 billion this year, according to the IDC.
“While 18 percent growth (this year) will be a sharp decline from the 61 percent growth witnessed in 2014, the numbers are still undeniably massive,” said the group.
IDC predicted this year will see 3.5 million new apps available to download from various app stores.
8. Free Wi-Fi in government buildings
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has outlined an ambitious plan to roll out internet access across the province using government buildings as a backbone.
The provincial government, the State Information Technology Agency and Neotel are to provide broadband services to some 2 000 government sites, including schools, libraries and health facilities by 2018.
Neotel will fund the infrastructure to install 384 wi-fi hot spots at Western Cape Government buildings.
9. Top-level domains
Since November, South Africans have been able to register the three new city-based “top-level domains” (TLD’s) of .capetown, .joburg and .durban as part of a global change in the domain names internet users can use as determined by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
A domain is what comes to the right of the dot in your internet address, – such as .com or .org – and since 2012 Icann has added about 1 500 new domains to give internet users more choice (think .beer, .tax or .ninja).
Whether people adopt the new domains, or chose to stick with .com, should become clearer this year.
10. Cryptocurrency. In from the cold?
The big year for bitcoin – the electronic currency that exists only on the internet – was 2013, when its price surged from about R2 000 a coin to more than R11 000.
Media attention may have moved on but the currency hasn’t disappeared, although its price has fallen in dollar terms to about a third of those 2013 highs.
There’s already a bitcoin ATM in Joburg and another may come to Cape Town this year.
Microsoft has announced it will accept bitcoins for some payments (such as Xbox games), indicating that the cryptocurrency is becoming more widely accepted.
Weekend Argus