Five tech predictions for 2012

Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa outlined his top 5 predictions for innovation in 2012.

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#1 - Social media will lose its sizzle

We may be getting more social, but, according to Wadhwa, the bloom is coming off of the social media rose. “It’s already happening in fact, as growth of social media usage has begun to slow for upstarts such as FourSquare and stalwarts such as Facebook alike,” writes Wadhwa. In this photo, people check their laptops and mobile devices in London on Oct. 26, 2011.

Paul Hackett / Reuters

#1 - Social media will lose its sizzle

Will we still use social media? According to Wadhwa, we don’t have to say goodbye to Facebook updates and tweets, but “the party’s over for investors and start-ups in this space.” In this photo, Facebook employees work at the company's new campus in Menlo Park, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2011.

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

#2 - The tech IPO bubble will pop

“LinkedIn and Zynga will probably lose more than half their value,” predicts Wadhwa. The news for Groupon will be even worse. “Groupon will probably lose most of its value as well because of the inability of the company to actually make a real operating profit that doesn’t require odd accounting gyrations.” In this photo, the corporate logo for Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite on Dec. 16, 2011, in New York.

Mark Lennihan / AP

#2 - The tech IPO bubble will pop

When the current social media bubble pops, Wadhwa predicts another will take its place in 2012. “We’ll see another bubble of inflated IPOs coming in the form of the next generation of social game companies, newfangled B2B technology players (if Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff doesn’t buy them all first), and cloud computing companies,” writes Wadhwa. “And there is little doubt that Facebook will be the IPO of the year — but likely at a lower valuation than is being speculated.” Bad news for Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured).

Brian Snyder / Reuters

#3 - The tablet market will explode

The year 2012 will be the age of the inexpensive tablet, according to Wadhwa. He predicts that tablets selling for under $100 will lead to an “explosion” in the tablet marketplace. “For sophisticated consumers, these cheap tablets will seem rudimentary. But there are many new markets that will embrace these devices. And they enable a quantum leap for education systems, communications and information sharing in the developing world,” writes Wadhwa. In this photo, a DataWind representative displays the supercheap Aakash tablet in New Delhi on Oct. 5, 2011.

Gurinder Osan / AP

#4 - Voice recognition will go mainstream

SIRI is just the beginning. Voice recognition is going to hit the mainstream, predicts Wadhwa. “Former CEO and chairman Steve Jobs revolutionized user interaction by popularizing the Windows interface and mouse. With SIRI, he did his magic once again,” the Post columnist writes. In this photo, a man uses SIRI on the iPhone 4S on Oct. 14, 2011, in London.

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

#4 - Voice recognition will go mainstream

“SIRI is light-years better at handling complex requests than anything on a smartphone to date — and is getting better with each software update,” writes Wadhwa. In this photo, a man swaps his data from his old iPhone onto his newly purchased iPhone 4S at an Apple store in London on Oct. 14, 2011.

Adrian Dennis / AFP/Getty Images

#4 - Voice recognition will go mainstream

“Apple will embed this technology in new devices such as the Apple TV, in future versions of iPads and iMacs,” writes Wadhwa. “It will probably open the interfaces to other applications and set off the voice revolution.” In this photo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs stands in front of a screen showing AppleTV and TV show "Glee" in San Francisco on Sept. 1, 2010.

Paul Sakuma / AP

#5 - “Cloudburst” shakes the tech industry

With clouds come storms, and Wadhwa predicts that companies’ rush to cloud computing is likely to produce quite a storm, or “Cloudburst” in 2012. “Cloud computing is advancing faster than our ability to secure systems,” Wadhwa writes. In this photo, a sign states the obvious on Water Street in Upper Marlboro, Md., on Sept. 8, 2011.

Matt McClain

#5 - “Cloudburst” shakes the tech industry

“One major security breach could throw cold water over the entire industry and slow down the corporate adoption that is expected to drive cloud growth this year and for many years to come,” writes Wadhwa of the rush to the cloud.

Joerg Sarbach / DAPD

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