Damiansen.com

Morten Lund claimed his trends (and hopes) for 2010.

Guess what: i haven’t told my trends for 2010 yet.

I believe there’s a lot of the same when comparing to 2009 but found 3 relevant trends follow:

App stores

The app store fad is in. Desktop Apps (Intel, Twitter Apps (OneForty) or Business Software (GetApp.com) they all race after the gold ruch, which in my opinion is more like Led. Apple made wonders when they introduced the App store because they simplified the way people had access and bough music, iPhoneApps,… But Apple controls the platform (ie, the iPhone, the iPod, etc…). Beside Google and the Android Market or Amazon and the Kindle no one else controls it (even Google is more open). This only means 3 things:

You build yout platform: Audible is trying to do it, maybe going against open formats(?)

Fees will be minimum since users can by directly from the App owner (the same is happening and already happened to some extent with the music and gaming industry: being middle man when you don’t control distribution channels or other forces in the supply chain  doesn’t pay off)

The only value they can add is based on how much extra exposure they can add to the apps: basically they become another point of sale the if the extra exposure created is enough, app owners may be able to. Some hype may keep the fad for a while though and some opportunities may be squeezed while the gold rush lasts (and everybody knows while the gold rush lasted, the only guys making money where basically the ones selling the pick and shovels ).

Simplicity

Web 2.0 is reaching a stability phase. Features will move toward integrated functionality. Real-time and Geo is still growing and experimental. The real deal will be driven by integrating these different geek features into things that make people life’s simpler. Twitter and Foursquare/Gowalla are breakthroughs but the real value out of it is still to come. It like the vinyl players that someone tried to squeeze into a car: the true meaningful innovation was portable music, which arrived with the k7 player. Too many features spur creativity and experimentation: they certainly drive unique stuff but more money generating ideas will arrive from the maturation of it.

The third one

There is a third one and it’s linked under different levels to the two above, while focusing on reducing cost to users (real and perceived cost). But I’ll ride that wave before someone notice it

TIP: TrendWatching.com has some good macro-trends that may be worth to take a look at