media available for the Fire right away, it's
3. NFC and mobile payments:
an appealing proposition.
This year is likely to be the year where
mobile payments blossom. We've seen a
great
deal
of
innovations
in
5. TV Everywhere
mobile
payment technology the previous years -including the success of Square's iPhone
dongle, allowing anyone to accept credit
card payments -- 2012 is the year of NFC.
Near Field Communication essentially lets
you replace your credit cards with your
phone: Wave an NFC-enabled phone near
the credit card reader in a store (or taxi
cab), and the money is deducted from
your account.By the end of 2013 , 1 in 5
cell phones are expected to be NFCequipped. Early contenders include Google
Wallet, Visa Wallet, Serve (by American
The cable companies have a cunning
plan: They'll let you watch live TV, plus
on-demand movies and TV shows, on your
connected devices if you keep your cable
subscription. Dish Network, Time Warner
and Comcast are among those offering
the
service.
TV Everywhere has been buzzed about
since 2010, of course, and could be a dud
-- but the rise of tablet devices would
seem to create increased demand for a
"TV in your hands."
6. Voice control
Express) and ISIS.
The novelty of Siri on the iPhone 4S,5 -4. Beyond the iPad
If touch computing is the future, then
the iPad is surely king. And yet the iPad
came up against serious competition in
the latter part of 2011, the new Amazon
Kindle Fire is a competitor to iPad. Simply,
the iPad costs $499 while the Fire costs
$199.Amazon's advantages don't stop at
the price point, however: The company
owns an entire content store of movies, ebooks, TV shows and other media. With
which allows you to send texts, create
reminders, search the Web and much
more using just your voice -- may be the
start of a new trend in voice controlled
devices. Siri and its ilk define a new era in
which we talk, and our devices understand
-- often on the first attempt. Other device
makers will likely follow suit. Apple may
use voice control to replace the TV
remote.
7. Spatial gestures
tablet devices, the hardware is somewhat
important but the content available for the
Other input methods are gaining traction
device is absolutely critical: With plenty of
too: Microsoft's Kinect, for instance, has
given rise to interfaces that use spatial
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