Technology Futures' Top 19 Technology Trends for 2008

Technology Futures, Inc. had provided a list of forward-looking trends for the coming year that will have significant impact on companies that use technology for competitive advantage. Commenting on the list, author David Smith (Vice President, TFI) states, “2005 and 2006 were periods spent building capacity and capabilities. 2007 and 2008 are years of transition. We saw tipping points in 2007 in several technology areas, such as broadband penetration and the death of single core processing chips.” He continues, “2008 will be a dynamic year impacted by possible actions such as the potential financial instability including the threat of recession, changes in the geopolitical environment, and further changes to the landscape of business.”

The trends will be of great consequence to those involved with global business, technology business process, science and universities, government agencies, federal labs, corporate labs, and technology savvy consumers.

Top 19 technology trends for 2008 include, Greening of IT; P2P; key players dramatically to increase the migration of core offerings; enterprise computing and data centers to change; Flash memory to hit the mainstream in a big way; Voice to no longer drive communication; Significant growth of WiFi; A new paradigm will arrive in the wireless markets; WiMAX to continue its consolidation and make many changes during the year; Internet Video of all types to increase; Digital convergence enter to enter a new stage of growth; Advertising revenues to increase; Outsourcing transitions to smart sourcing; Corporate and governmental business models move toward ones more dominated by Reed’s law of self-forming groups; Global warming and the energy crisis to continue to have major impacts; Global stability continues to become even more high risk; Worldwide economy will be volatile during the next few years; The age of bio continues to grow in importance and Social applications will come into prominence built around the growth of pervasive communications and computing.