Predictions for 2010

Here at Stradella Road, we prefer looking forward to peering back. So rather than recap 2009, we thought we’d end the year with a peek into our crystal ball for 2010. And guess what? We’ve got nothing but good news, at least from our perspective as marketers (some media conglomerates may beg to differ, surely).

1. The Rise of the “Read-Mostly” Devices.
Kindle, Nook and Sony eBooks, the JooJoo Tablet and maybe even an Apple Tablet will all be bumping and bubbling up to find their place in the market. Credit the iPhone and iPod Touch for creating the “Read-Mostly” device—a tool that mostly consumes media but is also capable of creating it to a limited extent (photos, tweets, short videos). These devices are suitable for snacking on media; immersive and interactive experiences will remain the province of computers, game consoles, and televisions.

2. Dataphones Finally Get Serious.
Texting doubled in the USA over the past year or two, —and cell phone call times decreased to 2.3 minutes. Which is to say… the death of the “minute” is coming down the pike, and we can expect to see more and more phones sold with plans measured in Gigabytes rather than minutes. Buy a 5GB plan and do what you want: VoIP? Texting? Whatever. Expect Sprint and/or TMobile to kick in with a plan like this in the coming year.

3. The Al La Carte End Run.
Like a cool breeze on a late summer day, there’s a sense of a change ahead. Some of the signs are here already: Netflix Instant Watch surpassed DVD rentals, according to Feedflix, and rumours swirl that Hulu and YouTube are moving to pay-per-view offerings. Remember that recent seismic shift in the music business, where iTunes is now the largest music retailer? In 2010, we’re finally going to see what “A La Carte” video means to companies like Comcast and Time Warner—as well as HBO, CBS, NBC and all the others. Sure, the politicians in the hip pocket of the cable industry don’t like it but the harsh reality is that IP delivery of media over relatively “dumb” pipes is where we’re going.

4. More Decoupling of Budgets and Outcomes.
In 2009, we saw two movie-making extremes. On the one end, we got Avatar for a reported half-billion dollars in production and marketing expenses and Transformers for not too much less. And both of those made out okay financially. At the other end was Paranormal Activity, reportedly made for $15,000 and raking in more than $100 million. The former outcome has been the norm for a while; the latter phenomenon tends to be more rare. But in 2010, largely thanks to the pervasive use of social networks and an increase in paid digital distribution channels, we look forward to seeing more low and micro budget films attaining a higher degree of financial success.

5. Facebook Levels… and Maybe Even Contracts.
The huge run-up in Facebook membership fundamentally altered how we use the internet. At 350 million members, it has over 10 times more users than AOL did at it’s peak (26.7 million), and, in the same way AOL brought the Internet to the masses, Facebook has mainstreamed Social Networking. That said, in 2010, Facebook will finally start to get some competition in the English-speaking world, with a consolidation of smaller players as they align to draw the inevitable disenfranchised former Facebookers into their webs. Remember, nothing goes up forever.