New Years Predictions

I like reading about technology, so thought i would make some predictions for this year.

• Apple will launch a TV / Games box incorporating freeview / hard drive EPG recording / youtube and other internet media streaming. If they don't make their own, then i think they will buy one of the big games box companies... The box will be controlled from your itouch/iphone/ipad and/or hand gestures.
• Google will buy twitter, because it just can't crack the social media space, and it needs to compete against Facebook. Twitter also appear to need some help with their uptime.
• Facebook will dominate our attention even more, providing fully integrated "email" services and decreasing traffic to youtube via better video services. Facebook search will hopefully improve to provide more regional focus of results. Huge potential for Facebook search.
• Xero shares have increased significantly this year, and with their new Paypal co founder a major shareholder, along with their existing key shareholders, this company is only going up and up... MYOB live accounts did not prove to be much of a threat. However, this is room for many more on line accounting systems for "trade and professional services" type businesses, and watch those desktop accounting software providers disappear as they don't keep with the trend to the cloud. 
• The economy will remain flat, however, truly novel web based businesses will likely succeed and become household names by 2012. My prediction is for a finance type trademe service, connecting investors with borrowers directly, making the relationship more profitable for both, and removing the risk from the middle man. Integrated credit checks, and loan pool diversification services will help reduce risk for lenders.
• I hope that the Freeview service will expand with new and exciting TV stations like TVNZ7, and that cost cutters will stay away from that area. 
• NZ based computer games developers will get greater attention, and the government will learn that some investment in that area could have huge windfalls for our economy, similar to the movie industry.
• Email will slowly begin to fade into irrelevance, as greater use of social media sites take care of all our communications and file/media sharing, and work collaboration. Eventually, the amount of processing required to remove spam (99% of all email traffic), and the potential for good emails to get lost, will cause email to become an antiquated communication medium.
• The deployment of faster internet to rural areas will great for those users and will increase their productivity. However the primary issue preventing NZ becoming a leading IT services location is the international bandwidth and uncompetive pricing.
• The traditional landline will become more obselete as more "naked broadband with voip" services increase.
• Our customer base will grow by other 33% at least, just like it did in 2010.