1. Portable GPS units get capacitive touch screens and become the new umpcs.
2. iPod will dominate even further with iPhone and iTouch getting to the same capacity as their spinning discs couunterparts. Everyone will also want to have a Zune but those will be in short supply. Sansa players all of a suddent get noticed by the public.
3. Full size Tablet Pcs will continue seeing improvements only in vertical markets. The definition of a tablet will be completely blurred by the amount of new UMPCs.
4. Penryn – phones with a power of Pentium M and more. Real voice applications for the phones.
5. Nintendo DS lite gets a v2 upgrade and continues do dominate the portable gaming platform. Everyone still wants to buy Wii but thinks PS3 is the best and continues to play Halo on the Xbox.
6. Blue Ray becomes the standard, no one cares.
7. First affordable laptops that last over eight hours on a single battery charge.
8. Electric Car still a thing of the future.
9. WiMax blows out our perspective of what connected devices can do.
10. Google stock hits $1000

The eee PC shows that consumers are not interested in expensive cutting edge computers with innovative case designs (for want of a better phrase). They basically want cheap products and the eee delivers in a small yet conforming clamshell notebook design. That’s why “UMPCs” aren’t cutting it in my view.

I overheard a salesman, who didn’t have any stock of the eee, arguing with a customer about why she should buy an ordinary laptop. The best he could do was AUD1,000, to which the response was: “But that’s double the price of the eee”.

I think that other manufacturers will take note and design their own cheap eee counterpart. Emphasis on cheap. Also, probably emphasis on conforming clamshell form factor.

Why is DRM-free music downloads competition for the iPod? All DRM-free music services work perfectly well on the iPod. (Hey, I have over 80Gb of legal, DRM-free music on my iPod classic.) It’s hardly an either-or proposition.

The iPod is not the Kindle. Without the iTunes Music Store, there are lots of other convenient, legal ways of getting content onto your iPod. As more DRM-free outlets pop up, there will be even more iPod compatible places to get legal content. This hardly sounds like a problem.

If we believe Apple, the average iPod user has very few iTMS tracks on his iPod. This leads me to think that DRM, ultimately, has very little to do with the iPod’s success. Good industrial design, OTOH, has lots to do with it.

Keith, you’re right and I’ve added a mention of the Android.

No mention of Android in the smartphone section? With HTC bringing out the first device(s) in the fall, I think the announcement/leaks of said device in the summer may end up be a small shockwave through the smartphone industry.

My prediction is the major manuacturers won’t give up on the UMPC as it has potential to be a new major segment in electronics in the long term.
I think 2008 will be about MIDs and portable email, 3G on the go.
I think UMPCs will start taking on the Blackberry, as they offer real potential to Executives to read documents out of the office.
My riskier prediction is Sony will replace the UX this year, and HP will launch a UMPC model at CES.

James, we’ll get back with ya near the end of 2008 to see how it all really turns out.

Thank you for all the “work” you and Kevin do hear at jkOnTheRun. It’ll be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Woadan