Editorial Articles

Toward the back end of 2010, there was a lot of hype around certain technologies exploding in popularity in 2011, from tablet devices to Internet on your TV to HTML5 and CSS3 for websites. Steve McGrath, MD of Big Dot Media explains why some of these predictions may not come true

The iPad had very little, if any, competition in the tablet device market in 2010, but all that is set to change in 2011 with the launch of over 100 tablet devices at the Consumer Electronics Show during January in Las Vegas. The most notable of the new entrants is the Motorola Xoom and the Blackberry Playbook. However, I expect Apple to retain their dominance in the tablet device market with the impending release of the iPad 2. Specs for the updated iPad have not been confirmed, nor has the release date, but the smart money seems to be on front and rear facing cameras, thinner body (think MacBook Air) with the addition of a USB to name but a few.

More and more people are accessing television through the internet, and the BBC's iPlayer currently receives over 80 million requests per month for their content. The popularity of on-demand services such as BT Vision and Sky Anytime reflect a shift in the way individuals and families watch TV these days. The downside to all these on-demand services is that the network infrastructure in the UK is creaking under the weight of it all. Services providers such as BT and Virgin are having to increase the capacity of their networks to cope with the extra demand whilst maintaining the quality of 'normal' network services such as email and web surfing. Whilst TV on demand is nothing new in the likes of South Korea where average broadband speeds exceed 12Mbps, in the UK our average broadband speed is 3.8Mbps, meaning the days of everyone streaming HD/3D content directly from our computers are still a long way off.

Onto websites now, we are hearing that this will be the year of HTML5 and CSS3 and that Flash will be an obsolete technology, but this is a bit too soon for 2011. Whilst HTML5 and CCS3 are exciting developments, the lack of support in Internet Explorer (except for the new IE9) will still mean that in a commercial environment, we will still have to take into account the limitations of IE8, IE7 and dare I say it, IE6. Browser market share still puts Internet Explorer firmly in control with nearly 60 per cent of the market and this is unlikely to change much this year. In the UK specifically, the public sector accounts for a large portion of IE6 and IE7 usage and given the UK government's current financial problems, I cannot see the NHS rushing to upgrade all their machines to Windows 7 just so they can get IE9.

Staying with websites, 2011 will be the year of social shopping. Referral, or word-of-mouth buying, has been around since day one, but never has it been easier to endorse (or criticise) a product or brand on the Internet. The average Facebook user has 130 friends, so if you delight them, they can be your best (and cheapest) source of advertising, and with Facebook's user numbers exceeding 500 million worldwide, there is a huge potential for the buying power created by social proof. In addition to Facebook, the increase in review websites, recommendation websites, and aggregation websites shows that social buying is here to stay so brands need to engage and integrate throughout their customers' everyday life, rather than interrupting them with traditional one way marketing.

Steve McGrath, Managing Director

Big Dot Media