A year of 'hyperdisruption' is being predicted for the technology industry, with many new products being adopted, writes John Collins
This month Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite will finally hit the shops, having been made available to corporate customers at the tail-end of last year.
Industry analysts seem to think features such as the slick Aero interface, enhanced internet security and a raft of performance improvements will make it popular with home users.
Over the Christmas period, the first vulnerability in Vista was revealed, although security experts said it was a low or medium threat. Despite this, Microsoft maintains Vista is the most secure version of Windows yet, although this year is bound to see more potential points of attack for hackers revealed.
As long as Microsoft can stay on top of patching problems quickly, Vista could yet meet some analysts' predictions that it will be the fastest-selling version of Windows yet. Microsoft will make a big push on Office and Vista but old rival Apple could yet steal some of its thunder.
January could also mark the long-awaited launch of Apple's iPod-phone hybrid. In late 2005 the iPod manufacturer teamed up with Motorola for an iTunes-enabled phone - the ROKR - but it was roundly criticised for limitations in its functionality, particularly the fact it could store only 100 tracks.
Apple is now rumoured to be launching four and eight-gigabyte iPods with mobile phone functionality at next week's annual Macworld event in San Francisco.
A fly in the ointment for Apple's marketing types is that it was recently revealed that Cisco owns the iPhone trademark, the obvious branding for Apple.
And with Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform so dominant in the smart phone market don't be surprised if it introduces a version of its Zune music player with a phone in 2007.
Predicting what Google will do can always be hazardous - this time last year who would have thought the company would have paid €1.5 billion for the YouTube video-sharing site? The addition of traffic to YouTube will ensure Google becomes the most visited website on the planet this year, which can't hurt its already meteoric stock price.
Another large acquisition would not be implausible - remember the YouTube deal was an all-stock transaction so the company is still sitting on a massive multi-billion dollar war chest of funds that it raised on the stock market.
One area where Google has yet to focus its attention is music and how to search and find new music that meets your tastes.
Possible acquisition targets in this space include the MP3 blog aggregator The Hype Machine and social music recommendation service Last.fm.
Some commentators are suggesting that Google may buy the fast-growing virtual world game, Second Life, which now has over 2.3 million users.
Of course Google won't have everything its own way and will struggle to continue to deliver the kind of relentless growth that Wall Street demands of it.
Yahoo is going through a major reorganisation and with its new advertising platform should give Google a real run for its money this year.
Two new companies to keep an eye on are Spanish wi-fi sharing service Fon and peer-to-peer video distribution company the Venice Project.
The latter is set to be the viral surprise of 2007. Backed by the brains behind Skype and Kazaa, it has already attracted the likes of Warner Brothers, MTV, Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures thanks to its supports for copyright protection.
Analysts IDC predict that 2007 will be a year of "hyperdisruption" for the technology industry with many new products, technologies and business models being adopted.
It is certainly safe to say that a number of technologies - including virtualisation, RFID and web services - which have been around in one shape or another for many years - will enter the business mainstream in 2007.
In its Top 10 Predictions 2007 report, IDC is predicting that worldwide IT spending will increase by 6.6 per cent in 2007, up from 6.3 per cent in 2006.
As a result, the large vendors will be forced to innovate to drive sales growth and IDC backs software as a service, service-oriented architecture and the transfer of consumer Web 2.0 technologies back into the enterprise, as some of the strategies to which they will turn.
Mobility will also be a big theme this year as laptop sales look to set to overtake sales of desktop PCs for the first time and a range of increasingly smart applications make their way on to mobile phones.
3 will lead the charge in Ireland when it introduces its X-series phones in the coming months, complete with flat-rate broadband pricing and cool pre-loaded applications like Skype, Orb and Yahoo Messenger.
You can also expect to see an upsurge in new technology companies using the Business Expansion Scheme (BES)to fund their development following Minister for Finance Brian Cowen's decision in Budget 2007 to expand the scheme.
With the average cost of starting a new technology company tumbling, the new BES ceiling of €2 million to each company could spell bad news for local venture capitalists, who generally favour a small number of multi-million euro investments rather than managing a portfolio of multiple small investments.
Some fairly wild predictions are being made about the possible impact of blogs on this year's general election.
While it would only take one major scoop by an Irish blogger to fire them into the mainstream, the reality is that the election will probably provide a welcome traffic boost as more voters turn online for information about parties and candidates.
With Tesco launching as a virtual mobile phone operator on the O2 network, expect a couple of other big consumer brands to follow suit this year.
Don't be surprised if the next virtual operator is actually a financial services brand - anyone for a Halifax phone perhaps?
