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Four mobile predictions for 2010

There are no shortage of predictions about what this year will bring for mobile, so at the risk of piling on a bolted bandwagon here are a few more. Not exhaustive by any means, more of a selection of some of my favorites.

1. Celebrities figure out how to monetize social media, even if social media doesn't.

If Kim Kardashian can get $10k for a single Twit, how much could someone with a broader following and even greater respect coin? Lots of outrage and fuss predicted (can you trust anyone?), but the market will reward credible endorsements, and affiliate technology will enable both transparency and revenue.

Location-based posts and pics/ videos submitted via mobile will be a big part of this, as the mundanities of daily life are manna from heaven to the celebrity obsessed.

2. Developers expand focus from the device to the hardware ecosystem

A big challenge until now has been making it easy and reliable for phones to make calls, send texts, browse the web and download apps. Thankfully this is more or less a solved problem, so I suspect part of the battle will shift to the hardware ecosystem. People will start to integrate mobility into their physical environment - TVs, thermometers, speed cameras and sensors will become part of the extended operating system. Creative developers for Apple are already straining at the leash; first flashlights, spirit levels and compasses, and now blowers and handwarmers take us beyond the digital to the physical environment.

Look for big growth in the m2m market and intriguing modular hardware initiatives like Nokia's NOTA, Aduino and BugLabs and a fun new concept out of Portland, Green Goose (thanks Rob!).

In addition, companies like Nokia and RIM/Blackberry who are overdue for an operating system upgrade could take this opportunity to leapfrog even even Palm's fabulously slick WebOS and ensure their next OS is integrated more tightly into the physical environment.

3. Mobile augmented reality as a new search interface

Continuing the theme of moving beyond the phone, here we'll see the the overlay of digital intelligence with the real world. Google Goggles is an important validation - and gives them the advantage of having an alternative search trigger (their location algorithms deliver the search term, rather than the keyboard). This is a new enabler for many services that can overlay digital with physical, and there are some intriguing proof of concepts popping up like mushrooms, subway finders, interior design and ski slopes.

Bruce Sterling's speech at Layar's launch provides a good summary of the state of play and potential here.

Video: Bruce Sterling's Keynote - At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.

4. Health goes online and mobile at the same time

Healthcare eats up massive amounts of consumers' attention,' powerpoint ink and investment dollars (the second quarter of 09 saw more VC investment in healthcare than in IT). Professional-grade startups such as AmericanWell are quickly dismantling barriers to online health such as onerous insurance liability, online doctor-patient relationships and restrictions on cross-border medicine. At the same time Congress is on the verge of throwing another 30m uninsured Americans into the system who will need cheap yet effective treatment, and the shortage of primary care physicians is set to increase. I predict mobile as platform of choice here - more secure and personal than a computer and able to take, send and store pictures, sounds and videos of questionable body parts, and deliver location-based services that will help patients find services easier.

Every year for the past few years has been billed as the year that mobile will break through. As AdMob and Quattro proved late last year - 2009 was actually the year for mobile, but it came and went. Mobile is no longer another place, it is all around us, like the Internet now is. I think 2010 will be the year that mobile starts to integrate with the physical world to deliver genuine user benefits (such as saving lives) as well as more trivial ones (such as Kim K painting her nails). Either way, a busy time for innovation ahead.