It’s always fun to look back at the predictions that we made a year ago and see how the world really turned out. We are pleased to say that we are correct in 4 out of the 5 predictions that we made.

1. Mobile phones will see their first major form factor breakthrough since the iPhone. (Incorrect)

Ok, this is the only one we got wrong. One year later, we haven’t seen any major breaktrhoughs in form factor for smartphones. Droid with its physical sliding keyboard can hardly count as a breakthrough. In fact, we feel that more and more phones are just doing the "me too" thing and have a purely touchscreen keyboard.

2. An Updated Kindle will arrive, legitimizing the 3rd device category. (Correct)

Yup, the Kindle DX did arrive, and eBook is getting huge. Not only is the Kindle the most gifted item on Amazon ever, Amazon also announced that it has sold more Kindle e-books this holiday season than physical books for the first time. That’s a big deal. Barnes & Nobles launched its own Nook e-book, Sony updated its line of e-book readers, and many other lower profile names are also jumping into this space. Of course, the long-rumored Apple tablet device is also said to be a great e-book reader, but we will have to see about that.

Can’t really deny that e-book readers are now mainstream. For 2010, we expect color e-book readers to make an appearance, faster e-book readers and prices to drop.

3. Tracking down your friends will become easier. (Correct)

Loopt, Google Latitude, Glympse, Foursquare and Rummble have all experienced tremendous growth in 2009, thanks to the strong growth of geo-location enabled Smartphones. Now you have so many options to track down where your friends are.

4. Android will gain major traction. (Correct)

By all accounts, this prediction was spot on, and in some ways, exceeded our expectations. 2009 has seen the introduction of over 20 Android based phones, with Android itself quickly evolving over multiple releases. Droid was the highest profile Android phone in 2009, but that’s set to change with the Nexus One in January 2010.

Although the marketshare of Android phones is still relatively small, given most of the phones were introduced towards the end of 2009, the percentage of web traffic from Android phones is huge. Data released by AdMob at the end of November 2009 shows that 20% of web traffic from Smartphones is from Android handsets.

We expect Android to continue to gain market share in 2010 as OEMs continue to push out more handsets. More importantly, we expect to see Android to run on non-phone platforms, such as digital photo frames, universal remotes, and even TVs.

5. iPhone 4G will *NOT* show up. (Correct)

Yup, iPhone 4G definitely did not show up in 2009. But we think that’s set to change in 2010. As the top-tier carriers are migrating to 4G technologies like LTE and WiMax, Apple could very well lead the market in introducing a 4G capable iPhone. It would be a great move to launch a LTE iPhone on Verizon, since Apple’s problem isn’t with the iPhone now as it is with AT&T. However, we think 4G iPhone is probably not ready for a June launch when the next iPhone is expected to be announced. But hey, we can be surprised.

Conclusion

So all in all, we have made 4 correct predictions out of 5. We will aim higher for the 2010 predictions!

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