Looking forward to 2008

Its that time of the year again, a time for new beginnings and the promise of excitement to be. There are plenty of people willing to make predictions about the year to come. In Silicon Valley it always helps when the VCs see good in the year ahead and that seems to be what the Mercury News says. Speaking of the Mercury News, Dean Takahashi quotes Mark Anderson for these predictions for 2008. Then there are Dean's own predictions for Tech Trends for 2008. The Inquirer, of course, has a spicier set of predictions, and as they pithily put it, some of them may even come true. :-)

In any case, I'll go out on a limb and make some of my own predictions :-)

1) 2008 will see Silicon Valley driving clean tech to new heights. Now, this is not so difficult to predict, because there is plenty written about it already, like this recent article. There may even be some more Clean Tech IPOs from the valley. One which would be particularly exciting would be NanoSolar, if it happens. This in turn will drive more VC activity in the space.

2) In the mobile world, we'll see more GPS applications in the cell phone, maybe even in the next gen iPhone. This has been a while in the making and maybe 2008 is the year.

3) Facebook and LinkedIn will both have a big "exit" in VC terms with either a big acquisition or IPO.

I'll limit my predictions to these three for now and measure my accuracy at the end of the year. :-) There will be plenty of other exciting happenings in technology in Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Yes, there is indeed much to look forward to.

Happy New Year !

Madan