Now that I’ve posted my results for 2009, here are my predictions for 2010.

Apple will have another hit with the Apple Tablet (iTablet) – get ready for the cage match between the iTablet and the Amazon Kindle. The Apple Tablet wont be a revolution and certainly wont have the same type of unit distribution as the iPhone or the iTouch. The last bit of estimates that I saw for the Kindle was close to 500,000 new Kindles in 2009 and most likely accelerating to a couple of million in 2010. That’s not like the 40+ million iPhone and iTouch units that have shipped but the tablet is going to be a strategic product for the Apple.

Augmented reality is the big trend in smartphones – yes, its cool to see the overlays on our screens during football games but imagine having rich data overlayed with you (wherever you are).

Location-based services is the new land rush – we have all been waiting for sexy applications that serve up highly relevant information. There are a lot of startups doing cool things like FourSquare but the large players are going to have the scale advantage. Twitter is already all over the location trend and with their acquisition of Mixer Labs (the team behind GeoAPI) they are certainly the first legitimate player with scale. Facebook and Google will come out swinging hard in 2010 though. Facebook has been slow and methodical due to their previous missteps related to privacy issues (aka Beacon). But, when they release their location offering they will be a formidable location-aware platform.

Show me the money – I whiffed my prediction last year around M&A activity in 2009. M&A activity was down a whopping 56 percent YoY from 2008 to 2009. Next year will definitely have an increase from 2009 levels but not 2008 levels. Venture activity will be up to 2008 levels.

Google will significantly ramp up enterprise efforts – they are coming at Microsoft with everything that they have and in 2009 they publicly talked about enterprise as a strategic growth area. They have been doing all of the right kind of enterprisy things like integrating with enterprise class clouds like Salesforce and providing SLAs.

Social games go to the Web – I am doing a lot of work in the social gaming arena. The social gaming category is white hot with the top 3 players (Zynga, Playfish, and Playdom) generating over $400M in 2009 revenues. In addition, there was one big acquisition of Playfish by EA for $400M. 2010 is when the social gaming category grows up. The key social players will realize that they have to diversify out of Facebook and build direct-to-consumer experiences that leverage their strengths on the social platforms. Zynga is already doing this with Farmville.com. You’ve got to be nervous about building a business on someone else’s platform (Facebook). Take it from me (running GameHouse.com), its powerful to be able to have your own platform that you own.

The new guys grow up – Twitter and Facebook will more aggressively roll-out monetization in their platforms. Something tells me that when you see so many companies making money on your platform (in the case of social gaming, dangerously close to Facebook’s revenues), you’ll want to start to collect taxes as well as extracting revenue. This will be done judiciously and methodically in order to not risk traffic growth.

Seattle startup acquisitions – last year, I predicted 4 Seattle companies to be acquired. One was acquired (Urbanspoon was acquired by IAC). In 2010, I am putting my chips on BuddyTV and Picnik. Of course, Mpire should be acquired but I am obviously conflicted on that call.

Here’s to a more prosperous 2010.

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Here are my 2009 technology predictions. It was getting harder and harder since my post is starting to look a lot like everyone else’s posts. I look forward to a better year for the world in 2009. Drum roll please…

10. Video finally takes off
Overall consumption of video increases significantly on Web. I have been saying this since my days at AtomFilms but it really does happen in 2009. Video advertising is finally going to get some traction. Higher quality will bring more eyeballs. There are some even better video predictions from my friend Alex Castro of Delve Networks (in full disclosure, I am an advisor to his company). His are spot on. I do disagree with his prediction that YouTube will lose market share. I think they’ll grow from their current market share of videos watched from 37 percent to 45 percent.

9. More ad networks versus less
Contrary to a number of predictions, there will be more ad networks versus less. With 80 percent of the ad supply being sold through indirect channels, there will be more (rather than less) ad networks. There will be better control over supply by publishers, and everyone on this Comscore list will be there by the end of 2009. Anyone who is building unique IP will have a chance at an acquisition. Yield technology in advertising is going to be a big theme in 2009 since all other forms of targeting are basically commodities.

8. Everything is simpler and smaller
We don’t have the IT budgets that we once did. Smaller and simpler devices will take off. For example, industry sources say more than 11 million netbooks worldwide were sold in 2008, up from just around a million in 2007. Netbook sales will easily double in the new year. Also, the majority of all phones next year will be smart phones (over 50 percent).

7. The giant sucking sound
There are going to be tons and tons of consolidations in the technology space. Big guys will buy big guys. Small guys will merge with small guys. Small guys will get bought by big guys. There will be a lot of great deals out there for companies with capital.

6. It’s cooler to start a business than a rock band
There are massive layoffs and the economy is bad. Per the above, when consolidation happens, unemployment increases. People are only an hour away from registering online for … Next Page »

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…is coming soon.

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