Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part XII

Ongoing Tech Trends we expect to continue 

• Cloud computing: This trend started in 2010 and quickly became mainstream. 
• The battle of tablets: After several years of breathless media coverage, the battle for tablet supremacy began when Apple, recognizing a vulnerability in its product line, launched the iPad Mini. Last year, we said it was a two-horse race between iPads and the Kindle Fire but expect a third player to gain traction – enter the Samsung Galaxy. This story has just begun. 
• Gaming for business:  Gaming will continue to be integrated into business and training apps to keep people engaged and entertained. 
• Big data: The media will continue to cover big data as it continues to go mainstream…until big data is supplanted by the next data trend. 
• Consumerization of enterprise apps: Enterprise apps had been hard-to-use but the mobile and BYOD trends has meant that formerly ugly enterprise apps now must be intuitive and easy to use. This push for ease of use also comes from the millennials, who expect enterprise apps to work like consumer apps. 
• Hybrid IT: Part on premise, part in the cloud: Companies need the best of both cloud computing and on-premise technology. We see this as a hot tech trends. 
• Second screens: Increasingly people watch television programs with their tablets, too, so they can comment real-time on what they’re watching. Helping customers express themselves and buy while they’re watching TV is going to be an important from a marketing perspective in the coming years. 
• Infographics: We expect companies to use infographics – visual representations of information like survey data – to make information shareable via social media but we don’t expect print media to reprint corporate inforgraphics because they typically take up too much of a user’s screen, particularly on smartphones. That doesn’t mean infographics are not worth producing, it just means B2B companies need to be realistic in terms of goals for their use.

Let us know if you agree or disagree with these or any other in our series. While this is a long list -- we could have probably broken them out into smaller individual sections , we felt that a dozen was enough -- this is not meant to be comprehensive, especially since trends pop up. For example, there's the "Harlem Shake" YouTube meme, which we haven't addressed (in part because when we created this list in January, the "Harlem Shake" hadn't gone mainstream). Or Pope Benedict's resignation and the appointment of Pope Francis -- clearly a top religion story for the year.
 
For our previous installments of our predictions, click here for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII ("Premature Deathwatch, Part I"),  Part VIII ("Premature Deathwatch, Part II"), Part IX ("Premature Deathwatch, Part III"), Part X ("Ongoing stories, Part I") or Part XI ("Ongoing stories, Part II").