Galery

1

Ivan Petkov

At the beginning of each year, we are flooded with all kinds of "predictions" and "assumptions" associated with each sector of life: business, politics, culture, sports, technology. Here I will try to take out my crystal ball and predict the trends in mobile technologies in 2012.

Apple, iOS, iPhone, iPad & Co.

I am starting with the company, which has been on the crest of the technological wave and driven the trends in recent years with its products. A sad event happened last year - the man, the visionary and main conceptual drive of Apple - one of its founders - Steve Jobs passed away. Inevitably, everyone is asking what road the company will take and whether its new products will be as successful as today’s. It is claimed that Steve Jobs was working on next generation products, which are to be launched this year. Surely, they will bear his invisible presence - something that hardcore fans of the company will appreciate.

iPhone 5 will be radically changed. As always, these are just rumours and the truth will come out in autumn this year when the smartphone is expected to be presented. Most likely, the design will be different because so far, Apple has strictly followed its plan to launch two generations of iPhone with the same design and make changes over two years. There will be many new things – aluminium body, larger screen, LTE capabilities and NFC chip possibly. Of course, there will be improvements in all other hardware components.

iPad 3 will also be launched this year and will be the successor of the undisputed leader in tablets. Its features will also be upgraded, but what we all expect to see is the iOS development - the operating system (OS) that powers the mobile devices from Apple. iPad offers many more features for visual presentation of products and is something more than a photo frame, an electronic book and a game device for Angry Birds. For that purpose, Apple has to enhance its operating system and the capabilities of the tablet. In general, the year promises to be successful due to the positive trends for the company from Cupertino, which has a large army of fans and a lot of customers, the largest store for music and mobile applications - iTunes as well as products perceived as icons and combining design and quality.

Google, Android, tablets and segmentation & Co.

Google is a huge company with many activities, which is the main driver behind the Android project. The lightning progress of Android, with a new version every 6 months, has quickly added all the necessary features to the operating system that make it competitive with iOS. Consequently, however, there is segmentation among the devices using the open source operating system. To be fair, it must be said that the Android platform is not monolithic but rather a set of many and various devices running the  'green robot.' And as enough functionality has been developed, this year the company will strive to fine tune its OS by continuing the integration of services they offer and are still developing. Android 4 is the latest OS and presents Google's drive towards standardization and setting a single interface to the platform’s applications. The Holo project has been recently announced and its aim is to unify the appearance of all applications, regardless of the manufacturer of the phone and the developer of the application. A few days ago, Google released a guide for designers.  

Tablets with Android. Android 3 was a version of Android OS designed specifically for tablets. Although there were many proposals from different companies, Android tablets could not take a larger market share. This year, Google and tablet manufacturers intend to change that. Android 4, which is named Ice Cream Sandwich, will unify the user experience and interface between Android phones and tablets. Furthermore, applications specifically optimized for tablets have been developed for the time being.