Five tech predictions for 2009

And a couple of things you won't see

silicon.com's Jo Best has been doing a spot of crystal ball gazing. Here's five predictions for the tech trends to watch out for in 2009 - and a couple of things that aren't very likely at all…

The rise of 'free as in beer' software
With SMEs being hit by the credit crunch perhaps harder than anyone and yet having the same need for up-to-date tech as other companies, 2009 could well be the year that 'free as in beer' software takes off. There are already a handful of software companies providing their services to SMEs ostensibly free to the customer, using advertising to make their money.

It's not such a bad business model - Google, after all, has founded its business on just such an idea - but enterprise software vendors can eventually seek to turn their ad-funded friends into real genuine paying customers. Free software and the ads that go with it are fine for a downturn but come the recovery - and when SMEs start to become larger companies - the progression to a paid-for, ad-less equivalent could well become all too tempting.

iPlayer ushers in the death of the TV licence
With talk of the BBC opening up iPlayer to other broadcasters and potentially foreign viewers, the BBC will be set to expand the ways it can make money from its one-million-requests-per-day hit. At the same time, the growth of web content poses a tricky problem for the BBC: you might not have a TV, yet still be consuming Auntie's content. You may have no TV, but a laptop on which you don't watch the Beeb's programming, yet you're still liable to buy a TV licence. So what's the answer?

The answer is obvious to me, if likely quite painful for a lot of people: the Beeb has to go commercial. Whether that be offering ad-sponsored content, a subscription model or a pay per download is up for debate, but the increasingly commercialisation of the Beeb is not.

Big boys feel the pain
As the economy worsened and the perception of its health dropped faster than a concrete kestrel, a number of big name brands thought too large to die bid the business world goodbye.

My guess is that tech companies are likely to follow suit. Not just the fledging firms, too - 2009 is likely to see some big names go down. There are a few companies in tech that have been a stranger to success and must-have new products for a long time - don't be surprised if 2009 is the year investors finally lose patience.

Google reveals another surprise
While rumours of a Google OS for PCs have been rising and falling for some time, the pieces are falling into place for its likely emergence in 2009: Android has given Google the nuts and bolts basis for the OS, Google Apps continues to grow in a way that's making it a viable competitor for Microsoft Office and a recent Times interview hinted Google is ready to strike OEM deals in the PC sphere, giving it a new route to market.

A PC OS could be just what the doctor ordered.

Mobile broadband beats fixed
Australia's incumbent telco Telstra has already gone live with a 21Mbps mobile network while Vodafone in Europe is testing a 28.8Mbps equivalent – I predict it won't be long until the UK's operators launch their super speedy networks on the unsuspecting British public.

Assuming a 28.8Mbps theoretical downlink delivers a third of that speed in the real world - a rule of thumb used by Telstra - then we're looking at networks that promise roughly 10Mbps. That's almost double the UK fixed broadband average speed, according to broadband comparison site Top 10 broadband - giving UK broadband users more reason if it were needed for many people to switch to a wireless option.

And a couple of events you won't be seeing next year…

Labour realises it's making a massive mistake
ID cards: a costly, unpopular error that Labour has doggedly persisted in pushing through parliament in spite of, at best, ambivalence from the public and scepticism from the public sector and industry alike. Sadly, I'm not expecting 2009 to be the year Labour ditches the scheme and reinvests the cash into - say - financing social networking and MMORPG start-ups.

CIOs give Vista a go
While Vista may be Microsoft's fastest-selling OS the business community has yet to see any reason to jump on the 'Wow' bandwagon. I'm not expecting 2009 to be the year when it all changes, either.