Innovations in technology bring us closer to sleeker, sexier, more powerful gadgets with every passing year. There’s a lot of promise then in the coming year where not only are we going to see new gadgets, but new genres of tech.
3D printing, for example, has been gaining a lot of momentum this year. Next year, more and more people will be able to get their hands on crowdfunded, and hopefully affordable, 3D printers. With the ability to print anything from jewellery to artificial limbs, 3D printers will pave the way for consumers becoming manufacturers. And that can only be a good thing!
One of the most prominent category of gadgets to soon see a surge in demand is that of wearable tech. Be it smartwatches or fitness trackers or Google Glass, wearable tech is here to stay. Plus, never before have we had as many options to explore. Smartwatches were introduced in India this year and you already have Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, Qualcomm’s Toq and Sony’s Smartwatch to choose from. With the most commonly proclaimed (and eventually flouted) new year’s resolution of getting fit, fitness trackers are bound to get even more popular. And, whether or not you’d be able to afford a Google Glass, you are definitely going to see more apps designed to bring out the best of wearable tech and hopefully competitors such as Apple launching devices to rival the Glass.
With greater emphasis on moving to the Cloud, users will start storing more and more information in the virtual world. Users have started looking at software such as Google Drive and iCloud, and apps such as Dropbox as pretty dependable. This will enable them to rely more on the Cloud in the coming year and move away from physical storage on a personal computer or a laptop. This could bode well for devices such as the Chromebook which has been attempting to make inroads in the Indian consumer market without little success till now, despite being a very promising category of devices.
With the innovation in materials and sensors, personal computing devices such as smartphones and tablets will become sleeker and more flexible. Companies such as LG have already introduced curved displays on a smarpthone and smart TV this year. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot of flex in the form factor of smart device, which frankly has been stagnant for a while now.
Next year, we’re not just going to see more apps; they are going to be smarter apps. With contextual computing, the kinds you can now experience with Google Now, apps are going to know more about you so they can customise their offerings to suit every user profile. Hopefully, developers would also want to integrate augmented reality into more and more applications to make the line between the real and the virtual even more insignificant.