We’ve found the corporate crystal ball, dusted it off, spent the first few days of the year peering into its fathomless interior and have come up with the following:
- Tablet unit shipments/sales, having drawn level with PCs in the final quarter of 2013, will on an annual basis overtake them in the year as a whole achieving around 300 million shipments including the white box variety which will flourish.
- Nominet will launch their .uk domain release in the summer. It will prove a remarkable success with millions of the new shorter, slicker and simpler domains being taken up by existing registrants in the first quarter of their availability.
- The new ICANN gTLD’s will continue to proliferate but initial unit sales will prove to be disappointing.
- Internet Retail Sales will continue to grow apace reaching over 11% of all retail during the year. The Office for National Statistics will introduce an improved analysis of these sales in the second half of the year.
- As previously predicted Apple will launch their iWatch before mid year and their iTV (with a different name) in the fall. Apple will make a major acquisition in connection with it’s 2014 product releases.
- Apple’s share price will remain in the $500-$650 range in spite of a return to some revenue growth.
- Sky will introduce another named streaming service to compliment Sky Go and Now but it won’t be called Start!
- The rise & rise of Amazon will continue but Jeff Bezos will not buy another main stream media publication although his wife may release another book!
- StrengthsFinder 2.0 will remain in the WSJ top ten hardback bestselling books for at least 50% of the year.
- Twitter will gain a lot of ground particularly on the advertising front. Its share price will jut rise and rise!
- Native advertising will gain many converts and hence will proliferate accordingly..
- CES and LeWeb will both spring major surprises.
- UK overall rainfall will be above the 1981-2010 average of just over 1.15 metres but we will have a brilliant early summer!
- We will win one of the home cricket test series this summer and a new captain of one of our teams will be announced.
We will in about 360 days review our predictions and invest in an improved crystal ball if necessary for 2015.
