Several major technological trends to come next year

Abstract: According to foreign media reports, we are all kinds of smart phones dizzy. We were looking forward to Facebook's listing, and then deeply disappointed. Moreover, we are waiting with bated breath to await the verdict of the Apple and Samsung patent dispute case. This is the

According to foreign media reports, we were dazzled by all kinds of smartphones. We were looking forward to Facebook's listing, and then deeply disappointed. Moreover, we are waiting with bated breath to await the verdict of the Apple and Samsung patent dispute case. This is the scene of the past 2012 years.

Now let's talk about the coming 2013 years. Will we remain focused on patents, smartphones and IPOs in the New Year? The answer is, of course, yes! But maybe it's not what you think. The great thing about the High-tech industry is that it's always moving forward. The new company stepped on the bones of the old company, and new faces replaced the old ones.

So what will happen next year? Here are some of the major technological trends that we are predicting next year.

1. Apple faces fierce competition

This is unavoidable. In a sense, it is a miracle that Apple has been able to rule for such a long time in the fast-growing market. But Samsung eventually overtook Apple as a leader in smartphone sales, even though Apple may be able to kill it back after a full quarter of the iphone 5 sales. This suggests that the smartphone market will continue to grow next year. Apple is just a company that will never be able to beat a group of competitors on Android mobile platforms.

Of course, this does not mean that Apple's market share will be greatly eroded. I found myself writing this article on a MacBook laptop and listening to music from the itunes Music Store, with my iphone on the table in Shanghai. We have seen all sorts of attempts to challenge the dominance of the iphone end in nothing. HTC has only been tough for a while. But, on the whole, Android handset makers (and perhaps the Windows Phone 8 handset maker) will be invincible forces. By the end of 2013, we might be talking about the ipad in the same way we talk about the iphone now.

"It's a huge platform change. 20 years ago, Microsoft and Apple shared the world pattern, and now it has changed. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said in a recent interview, "We will be able to play a great battle." "Our core strategy is to get a bigger share of the market," Mr. Schmidt added. "We will eventually play the advantage of open systems to gain greater market share," he said. ”

In other words, Google is keen to compete with Apple for the market, as Microsoft did 20 years ago: to narrow the quality gap by 1.1 points and grab the market with cheaper competitive products. Whether or not it is in court, this trend will only continue next year.

2. The IPO market has warmed again, but it has nothing to do with consumer technology

Facebook's not-so-glamorous listing process may have quenched Wall Street's enthusiasm for social media and consumer technology. High-profile companies, such as Zynga and Groupon (unlike LinkedIn and Yelp), now seem to be in danger of Grand.

Does that mean that Wall Street is no longer keen on investing in technology companies? In the past 10 years, some star-type big technology companies have raised big questions for the next generation of technology start-ups, offering great opportunities. We talk less about amazing apps and more about big data, cloud apps, and what's behind open source. In the technical field, you will pursue venture capital. Acquia is a company that is located in Massachusetts, USA, and is responsible for creating a rapidly configured content management system based on Drupal open source projects. At the end of November this year, it financed $30 million trillion, making its total financing up to $68.5 million trillion. It has grown by one-fold in the past year and will grow by 80% next year to 400 employees. The company's executives want a public listing in the next six to 12-24 months.

"In 2010 and 2009, it was almost impossible to make venture capitalists interested in enterprise software," he said. Some of them think this is a dead end. Tom Erickson, CEO of Acquia, said, "Now you will see that the situation is just the reverse." ”

Coincidentally。 In Belviu, Washington, Smartsheet, the company successfully financed 26 million dollars last month. The company is responsible for providing spreadsheets and other types of business cooperation in the era of cloud computing. Just two weeks ago, Silicon Valley company Cloudera also financed 65 million of billions of dollars, and the company developed a large data analysis technology based on the Hadoop Apache Open source project.

These companies may not be cool, and the people who create them may be the most reluctant characters in real-world dramas. However, they represent the direction of future development. The development trend of technology industry always swings between consumer and enterprise technology. Next year, the trend may be more business-biased.

3. Microsoft is becoming more and more interesting

In 2012, we were talking about the recovery of big Microsoft in the consumer market. Windows 8 is launched, and Windows Phone 8 is also launched. Also, there is a beautiful new tablet computer surface also launched. Its gaming business is still expanding, with little attention being paid to the growing number of large business software businesses.

It is still too early to estimate the sales of Windows 8, but early feedback seems to indicate a general sales situation. Surface tablet computer is the same situation, it is also the evaluation of middling autumn. Even more noteworthy: Steven Sinofsky, the head of both businesses, will teach at Harvard Business School next year rather than continue to run the Windows Department.

Yes, Microsoft finds itself playing an extraordinary role: it is an undisputed leader in the PC market that is no longer growing. Yet it is also the upstart of two fast-growing markets, smartphones and tablets.

With Sinofsky leaving, Microsoft now has no clear Windows development leader, and it has to overcome the problem. Don't be surprised if Microsoft's focus shifts further toward Xbox and Skype. Since their acquisitions in 2011, they have not seemed to have been fully exploited by Ballmer (Ballmer) and his company. Can they be more deeply integrated into other Microsoft products without scaring Microsoft's long-time users?

Most importantly, you will see Ballmer's growing pressure, and he needs to prove that his company is more than just a middle-aged tycoon who looks more and more like a shrinking version of IBM. And as Sinofsky leaves, you can see that investors will begin to question whether Microsoft has any form of management succession plan.

4. Facebook will continue to provoke us, and we will continue to love it

It may seem like a tortuous love story: a company that annoys its users, who denounce the company and swear that it will no longer use the company's products. The company then apologized to them (sometimes the company explained it was a total misunderstanding), and then after a few days, everyone forgot about it.

Welcome to the relationship between Facebook and its users that is sometimes smooth and sometimes friction. I'm talking about "users" rather than "clients", as Nathan Bransford of American tech blog CNet wrote two days ago, Facebook's users are its products. And its real clients are advertisers. The latest rub involves how Facebook's Instagram department handles photos of users (not customers). Facebook closed its community's voting system because of its poor practical results. We seem to like complaining in the online life that is similar to real life, but we don't like it.

Let's make a bet: In the next year, such friction will occur at least three times. Now, Facebook is a publicly traded company, and Wall Street expects it to continue to grow. And once you have more than 1 billion users, the law of numbers will cling to you. So Facebook will continue to tweak itself. Sometimes, in pursuit of greater profits, it may provoke us. Why not? We will eventually change our mind and forgive it.

5. The patent issue will still haunt us, but the solution will appear

Patent disputes are a major event in the 2012. A number of companies, from Intellectual Ventures and RPX to Apple, Google and Microsoft, have recently reported a total of $525 million in acquisitions of Kodak's image patent portfolio. Do you see a development trend?

There won't be any difference next year. Another lawsuit between Apple and Samsung will hit 2014 years. Patent lawsuits involving non-practising entities will continue to grow, while larger technology companies will continue to spend billions of of dollars to acquire a patent portfolio. There is no indication that this will change. The head of the U.S. Patent Office even believes that all these patent lawsuits show that the patent system is functioning normally.

People tend to complain about the patent system and claim that it needs reform. But that is the truth: the patent system was reformed last year, and when years of negotiations turned into law, the solution to patent disputes was often compromised, leading to little difference in the final outcome. The challenge for patent reformers is simple: there is a pair of "twin sisters" in the technical field. One is high technology, the other is biotechnology or pharmaceuticals. In the High-tech sector, it makes little sense for patent owners to sit on their patents and do nothing.

But in the field of biotechnology, it makes sense. People in High-tech fields tend to forget that their product cycles are rarely more than three years old. The cycle of biotech products is often calculated in decades. Having an invention approved by a regulatory agency and tested through experiments requires a lengthy process and is costly. These patents usually pay dividends for big investments.

Should software and Internet concepts not be patented? This is an interesting idea, but it is difficult to achieve. Don't you allow a lot of licensed software and Internet patents to be put into use? In any case, any regulatory changes will take several years.

But there is a market solution that any technology libertarian would like. You may see a company called RPX in the Kodak Sales patent statement. The company, located in San Francisco, is trying to become a patent exchange. Yes, like the patent company Intellectual Ventures, RPX also buys patents. However, unlike Intellectual Ventures, RPX company promised not to conduct patent lawsuits. Companies can subscribe to RPX's patents and charge a fee based on their size and income. Big companies pay more than small companies. It seems fair, doesn't it?

By the end of next year, we expect to see RPX and similar companies make technical patent disputes more sober. This is a typical opportunity in the technical field: it is a problem that requires a solution. People should not expect the government to solve it.