Null's Tech Predictions for 2008

Hey, I don't know what's going to happen next year any more than you do... but I have a hunch about a few things. Here's my take on what we'll see from the tech world over the next 12 months, for good and for bad.

iPhone 2.0 - A new iPhone is coming, and probably sooner than you think. I am guessing it'll be announced officially at Macworld in January, just like last year, with release in the summer. What will it do? 3G and GPS, for starters. What you do with your old iPhone (with another year on the contract) is another question.

Android Arrives - Google's Android open source phone OS will ship to incredibly positive reviews, but only a scant few handsets will be available with it. Carriers won't be thrilled about Google poking around in their backyard (see next prediction) and will see this as a way to subtly punish Google.

Google Smacked Down at 700MHz - Google will bid for the coveted 700MHz wireless spectrum but will get beat out by one of the major carriers, which will snap it up... and do nothing with it.

No End in Sight to the High-Def War - And on it goes, as prices on HD DVD and Blu-ray players stabilize at $199 or so. The war, in fact, will really start to heat up in 2008. Everything we've seen so far is just prologue.

Intel Continues to Dominate PCs - AMD will bring some new and compelling CPU offerings to the table, but Intel's momentum just won't be stoppable as it keeps rolling over the competition in both desktop and laptop computers. Buying a new high-end computer next year will probably still mean buying Intel.

A Shift from Magnetic Storage - 2008 will bring solid-state hard drives (based on flash memory instead of spinning disks) as a reality for many. Now available at 64GB, affordable, smaller solid-state disks will hit the mainstream in a big way, leading to more crash-resistant laptops.

No New TV Tech - Laser, SED, OLED... all of these technologies will continue on the sidelines as LCD and, yes, plasma, keep duking it out with bigger, brighter, and cheaper screens.

802.11n Finally Arrives - Years in the making, a new Wi-Fi standard will finally be ratified, approved, and everything. That said, it won't offer much that the draft N standards don't already do.

Wii Momentum Starts to Slow Down - You may finally even be able to buy one next Christmas!

PS3 Remains in Last - Unless Sony makes extensive price cuts to the PS3, it won't pick up the ground that many are expecting... and Sony is not a big price slasher. I'm not counting Sony down for the count, but I predict that Xbox will continue to draw bigger buzz in '08 than the PlayStation.

Superfast Internet Starts Arriving - We're seeing hints of it now, but ISPs will start ramping up to faster and faster offerings. Comcast is talking about 160Mbps service... of course, that doesn't mean it'll be available where you live.

You'll Finally Switch to Vista - Microsoft has been wearing you down all this time. Frankly, it's just inevitable at this point, unless you break down and buy a Mac.