Cringely has a bunch of predictions for 2012. They all feel wrong, for one reason or another. Let’s run through them.
A new CEO for Apple: No.
Amazon and Bezos supplant Apple and Jobs: No. Shareholders don’t understand Amazon and will keep punishing the stock in the same way they punish Apple stock. “Selling stuff cheap” is not sexy enough. No-one gets excited about Primark. Amazon will take 3-4 years at least to see the advantage of Kindle Fire strategy. And Bezos is not the man to build a rapport with media industries, he’ll continue to just try to route around them – which will take much longer. So long term: yes. Next year? No. Don’t get me wrong – I think Amazon is one of the best companies on the planet. But I don’t think many others realise it.
Intel buys Qualcomm: No. Hubris. If Intel can, they will try to get there by throwing marginally less cash than the purchase price of Qualcomm at dumb initiatives like Tizen. And they aren’t hurting enough – yet.
Motorola buys Tivo: No. Tivo is dead anyway. Googorola hubris will say they can build the new TV experience better than Tivo, Apple, or anyone else. Expect another year of Google TV failures.
No IPO for Facebook: This could go either way. My bet is it will be very late 2012 or early 2013; those new investors that came in last year are going to be anxious to see a big return in a 1-2 year time frame. They won’t be happy to wait. And Facebook are sailing very close to the wind on all-out privacy invasion, and need to IPO before this becomes a mainstream PR issue.
Thompson’s no Yahoo: Well duh. This is not a prediction. Nokia Windows phones are going to bomb. And it will probably rain this week. Any other dumb non-predictions we can make while we wait for Yahoo to quietly die? 
New Microsoft CEO: I’d bet against it, as the real damage to shareholders hasn’t happened yet. Office and Windows remain safe strongholds in the medium term; acquisitions like Skype allow the perception of progress (and actually are a pretty smart move if you can no longer innovate). Most shareholders simply don’t understand the form factor bloodbath that iOS is wreaking, and are therefore content to see Windows Phone bumble along. Microsoft always gets it right on the third iteration … Mango is only the second (never mind the 6 versions of Windows Mobile before it).
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See also Gruber’s claim chowder of Cringely on Adobe.
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Let’s put my money where my mouth is. Here’s five predictions you can judge me on:
- No Apple television set and no iPad 3.
- Google TV will be another failure. And Google+ will continue to be a failure.
- No new WebOS hardware.
- No Euro collapse (sneaking in a non-tech one).
- This year will be ‘boring’ (at least in tech) in comparison to last year’s apocalyptic nature (Elop, Leo, Jobs, etc), even counting Nokia off-loading the smartphone division to Microsoft and little Nokia resurrecting mobile linux.
And you? Where do you place your bets?