3 major forecasts for the 2013 technology industry

Summary: The following is the full text of the article: the most important ideas in the technology industry are sometimes hidden in the most common technology. With that in mind, I have launched 3 predictions for the 2013 technology industry. No 3D TVs, no wearable computers, no ordinary people.

The following is the full text of the article:

The most important ideas in the technology industry are sometimes hidden in the most common technologies. With that in mind, I have launched 3 predictions for the 2013 technology industry. No 3D TVs, no wearable computers, no jet packs for the general public.

1. The Kindle price makes you irresistible.

The demand for e-readers using electronic ink technology is shrinking rapidly. Market research firm Isuppli predicts that by the end of 2012, global e-reader sales would be around 15 million, down 36% from 2011.

It's a matter of course who makes tablets cheaper. Yes, a minimum of 70 dollars can buy a Kindle. But if a little hard-hearted, spend 200 dollars, you can get an e-reader, a media player, a game machine, there are many.

The use of electronic ink technology dedicated e-readers are eliminated, not because of technical backwardness, but because the value proposition has changed. There is a simple solution, which is to drastically reduce the price, low to the extent you can not refuse.

It could be 50 dollars. At this price, when you buy an occasional device, the decision is relatively simple. For students, you can buy one without thinking about it. For children before the age of 10, you can also give them Christmas gifts.

With the exception of Amazon CEO Bezos Jeff Bezos, no one knows what Amazon needs to offer in the Kindle, and no one knows how much they can afford to lose. Although the company generally agrees with the idea that the Kindle can afford to lose money because it can boost Amazon's E-book sales – if the Kindle is a razor, then the ebook is the knife. Amazon also has a reputation as a "price butcher": It was the first to reduce the price of e-books to 10 of dollars below cost, causing publishers to panic.

Amazon has launched a digital book revolution. Electronic ink technology has changed our lives, it is still very valuable, should not disappear. Amazon's only mistake was to set the Kindle too high, and now the company has a unique advantage to rectify the problem and bring new life to this still revolutionary product.

2. Netbook comeback

Electronic readers have survived the crackdown on tablets, and netbooks have unfortunately died.

Netbooks are a portable computer with a basic configuration that is ambitious and wants to change the world. But when the volume and weight of a full-featured computer shrink to the same extent, the myth of netbooks is shattered. The appearance of the MacBook Air was the first shot, and the ipad was the last remaining force to be wiped out.

But now the situation has changed and the appeal of netbooks has re-emerged. The advances in cloud computing allow for easy deployment of various office activities such as collaboration and document sharing, reducing the importance of local storage devices such as hard drives. In fact, high-end devices are now equipped with more lightweight but slightly lower capacity flash memory. The biggest compromise for netbooks is the lack of optical drives, which are now increasingly useless.

Who would like to spend more to buy these extra features?

Of course, many people would like to, but there are many people do not want to. If you spend more than 200 dollars to buy a good notebook, think twice when you need to pay 1000 dollars for another device that is similar.

The mobile revolution has tended to diversify the computing industry. We now use the mobile phone almost the same time as the notebook. 3 years ago, we had just discovered that we needed a tablet, and now it's dominated. For a long time to enter the content, the notebook is still indispensable. It is only in this day and age that such products may be just a standby, not a preferred option.

As a variety of computing performance gradually shifted to the remote server, the client's size is getting smaller, the price is lower, the attraction of the netbook also appears again. Google is no doubt the biggest beneficiary of the field.

The search giant has a unique innovation advantage, because it has enough resources and money to enter the popular product market, and can withstand a meager profit. Google began promoting netbooks a few years ago, and last year also launched a leasing program for businesses and schools. The company is now also starting to sell two models directly to its users, the most expensive of which comes from Samsung but is priced at just 250 dollars, which is comparable to a tablet, but far below the ultra extreme.

There is a problem: the term "netbook" may have a negative effect because these products end in failure when they are first marketed. Google has completely abandoned the word, but its own netbook named "Chromebook."

In that case, beat.

3. Siri is popular

When the iphone 4S was launched in 2011, Siri quietly sparked a revolution. Like many of Apple's innovations, voice commands are not new technologies-they are already there, but they have been widely criticized. The effect of speech control on desktops has been poor, and the way it is used is unnatural. Of course, the dialogue with Siri sometimes makes people feel puzzled, and seems to be casting pearls before swine.

However, unlike desktops, we have a much more natural conversation with mobile phones. So, talking to your cell phone doesn't feel weird. By the way, I've been using Siri since the beginning. I also called Siri this time last year as one of the "scientific earthquakes" of the year.

Siri is not the popular version of Watson, an IBM supercomputer, who beat the human race in the American TV quiz "The Brink of danger," but my passion for it has not diminished. However, many people have "broken up" with Siri. Nick Bilton, the New York Times columnist, wrote a regrettable Nick Bilton in July, saying: "Last week, I had a final conversation with Siri." ”

But in my opinion, Siri and the similar services on the Android platform will ignite a prairie fire in 2013.

The weakest link between people and computers is always input, that is, how to communicate with them. Keyboards, touch boards and game handles are inherently flawed. We are always looking for a variety of easy channels, hoping to keep the computer to keep up with our thinking.

The iphone's success depends largely on simplicity-its interface is at an unprecedented level of synchronization with our thinking. I made an outline of this column when I was doing clutter. I couldn't have done it before. As we all know, good ideas always come out at the most inopportune times: When you are in a hurry, when you are exercising, when you are taking a bus, tossing and turning.

Siri's popularity is not up to my expectations-most of the iphone users I know don't use the service. But voice control is really ubiquitous. Google Android devices also have a lot of similar products. Siri and Android voice control are now open applications, making switching between them much easier.

So I'm going to make a bold prediction about next year's trend: voice technology will be further improved to get instructions more precisely. Although this is not amazing, but it is very useful for daily life. Siri and its products will be more widely available and will gradually strengthen the processing capacity of complex tasks.

Google and Apple may be complemented by larger promotions, but the focus may not be on the killer of voice search, but on the seemingly mundane features of everyday life. It makes sense to be able to be responsive.