Video Post: Tech Predictions for 2012

Following Andrea's social media predictions for the new year, Steve offers his predictions for technology in 2012. He covers an increased focus on television, the future of webOS and possible surprise acquisitions that could shake up the market.

Will Amazon Take a Bite Out of Apple?

Last week's announcements from Amazon absolutely rocked the tablet world. But it wasn't because they introduced 2 new e-readers, or because they dropped the prices of their other e-reader, or even the release of their new Kindle Fire tablet.

The reason Amazon's announcement was so huge is that the 7" Kindle Fire will retail for just $199.

This led to a firestorm (pun intended) of activity as companies like HTC and Blackberry slashed the prices of their 7" tablets, the Flyer and Playbook respectively, by hundreds of dollars. Other companies like Samsung and Toshiba, who have similarly-sized tablets set to debut before the end of the year, are rumored to be adjusting their prices as well because of what Amazon did.

So, even though not one Kindle Fire has been shipped yet, it has already shaken the Android tablet market to its core...and rightfully so. We haven't seen any Android tablet claim that mythic "iPad killer" title, mostly due to the fact that none of the premium tablets undercut the iPad on price.

The Kindle Fire takes a different approach. Instead of trying to beat the iPad on local storage size or unique design, Amazon made a physically different device (7" versus the iPad's 10") with a different purpose (heavy cloud streaming versus heavy app usage) aimed at a different consumer (casual media consumption versus heavy media consumption and mobile computing).

While it's a different strategy, Amazon is going with the basically the same approach as Apple when it comes to tablets. Both Apple and Amazon have spent years building up services like iTunes and Amazon Cloud Services before releasing their tablets.

This means that while existing Android tablets continue to deal with a fledgling OS in Honeycomb, Amazon will have an extensive media library at its disposal.

More importantly, while those other tablets continue to appeal to more technically-inclined people who don't want to be "stuck" in the Apple world, Amazon will appeal to those who like the ecosystem approach that has made Apple successful.

The end result is that Amazon, regardless of intent, may have put itself in line to go head-to-head with Tim Cook and company.

What's On Your Phone? A Smart Phone Testimonial

By Dave Sniadak

With more than 10-billion apps downloaded since, well, the start of the business of downloading apps, it's time we all take a look at our phones and purge those apps that haven't been touched in a while.

The Nielsen Research Company recently posted findings from their first mobile media rankings for Android usage. Their findings are based solely on what Nielsen is calling apps that have 'active reach' - or the percentage of Android users who've used the apps in the past 30 days - from U.S.-based smart phone users ages 18 and up. The findings are interesting, if not telling about how men and women use their smart phones differently.

Nielsen's list of the overall Top 20 apps shouldn't surprise anyone - Market, Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook and Google Search are the first five - and the report supplements the list by breaking it out by gender. Apps like QuickOfficePro, Talk - Text to Voice and Adobe Reader imply that men might use their smart phones for work. Apps like Facebook, Words With Friends and Angry Birds tend to populate women's phones more than men, leading observers to believe female smart phone usage could be more on the playful side.

The biggest takeaway is that while millions of mobile users around the country may use their phones for a multitude of unique reasons, they're all dialed into smart phones for much more than just talking.

Photovine App Grows A Photo Story

Google recently went live with a new picture sharing application for iPhone called Photovine. The app offers users a way to share pictures in categorized threads called vines. These vines have themes such as “sunsets” or “sleeping cats” as determined by the original creator. Users then take a picture that matches the theme and adds it to the vine, thus creating a growing photo story. Hence the apps tagline: “Plant a photo, watch it grow.”

Users can add comments, "like" photos and see vines in either a single, slideshow format, or grid view. There are also three different ways to sort the vines: Fresh, popular and watching. Users can also find and follow address books, as well as Facebook and Twitter contacts. Because anyone can upload to vines and view photos, the app can feel a little impersonal, which is why the “Activity” tab is nice. It shows all new photo-related activity from friends, making the app a little more intimate.




I am surprised to learn that Photovine is so far an Apple exclusive app. There’s no Android app yet, which is a curious move to say the least. Google doesn’t usually exclude its own mobile platform with new product launches. Also perplexing is the exclusion of an option to add your Gmail contacts. Is Google just playing nice with Apple fans? Why exclude its own services?

I have no doubt that Google will launch an Android version of the app soon, but until then, Apple bears the fruit of this "vine".