Online Tech: The new money spinners

Technology in 2010

Last year, the market was dominated by smartphones and social media and 2010 looks to continue this trend. In fact, in terms of technological highlights and breakthrough of gadgets and applications, 2009 was probably the most packed year in a long time, so where did it all go right for online tech?

2009 will be remembered for being the year when smartphones took off, with the application market becoming worth over a US$1 billion. On top of that, everyone and his dog began to 'tweet', Microsoft didn't drop the ball with Windows 7, Spotify changed how we listen to music and real-time search became the new goal for software giants the world round.

The smartphone revolution

While companies, news services and politicians are embracing social media networks such as Twitter, it probably would not have been anywhere as popular without the growth in the smartphone market. This time last year, there was merely the Blackberry and the iPhone, but now the market is awash with 3G devices such as the Motorola Droid and the Palm Pre. Apple's iPhone, in fact, became so popular that when the two year exclusivity deal with O2 ended, providers were falling over themselves to secure exclusivity. Eventually, Orange, Vodaphone and Tesco secured deals.

Today, the application market, which has proved to be the cornerstone of smartphones' popularity, is worth over a US$1 billion with Google's Android Marketplace attempting to rival Apple's; whilst Orange, Nokia, Samsung and BlackBerry all try to stay in the race with their own app stores. With apps ranging from GPS programs to 'finding the nearest ATM', app stores have enabled smartphones to be ever-growing and ever-changing portable devices.

What's more, the growth in smartphones also saw a change in operating systems. Whereas once the iPhone could claim it has the sleekest operating system on the market, Google's Android soon changed that. With a great user interface featuring seamless integration with Google services and super fast load times, as well as an ever growing application store.

Today, even Apple faces some serious competition in Google's smartphones, such as the Nexus One, that could very well dominate the market this year.

Real-time searches

Another reaction to Twitter's rise in popularity is that the likes of Google and other search engines rapidly began to look out of date when news stations and the like began to pick up news stories from users' tweets. This was highlighted in both the Hudson River plane crash and the Mumbai terror attacks, when both stories were broken on Twitter from users who had witnessed the events. As such, both Google and Bing have been securing real-time search elements, mainly by signed deals with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in order to have 'real-time' results integrated into their search indexes.

So what does 2010 hold for us?

While mobile smart-technology may have soared last year, expect it to get even better this year. Augmented reality applications are set to get over, with your phone being able to tell you the history of a building by you taking a picture of it, or even telling you if it's available for purchase.

Once companies start using augmented reality applications to advertise (such as telling consumers how far they are from a particular branch and the offers available) the possibilities are endless.

Also, expect netbooks to become almost as popular as PCs. Currently a quarter of all PC sales are now netbooks, but 2010 will no doubt increase as people demand the diversity of their home computer, but with the portability of their smartphone.

With wi-fi becoming more and more commonplace in public, real-time searches keeping us up to date with by-the-second news and smartphones enabling us to do anything we want on the move, expect this to take it to the next level with companies that embrace it, reaping the financial benefits.

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