It looks like everybody and their dog are doing predictions for 2011. And I cannot let that bandwagon go past unnoticed, so here are my predictions. It will be interesting to re-visit this in a year to see how right (or wrong!) I was.

The Patent Madness will Continue

I know. This one is nearly too obvious to be rated as a prediction. (In other news: The sun continues to rise in the East!).  But until we get the patent system fixed, the madness will get worse.  And since the current hotbed of consumer gadgets is essentially portable computing (tablets, smart phones, netbooks etc), we will see more mad patent lawsuits from patent trolls on (obvious) patents like these:

• Touch-screen interfaces
• Voice recognition
• Video calling

Most of these lawsuits will be settled before a judgement is laid down - but not before everybody have slapped their foreheads at the patents.

Android will Continue to Dominate over Windows Mobile

Mobile phone manufacturers will increasingly choose Android as an operating system in preference over Windows Mobile. Obviously, there will be new versions of both, and Microsoft will attempt to use the normal tricks to gain traction: patents and lawsuits, perhaps even directly suing Google.

Oracle will Not Kill Off MySQL

Despite the fears in the open source and free software communities, Oracle will not kill off MySQL. It is simply too valuable for Oracle: It stops competitors from gaining a foothold in the low & medium end of the database market. But Oracle will continue to be in two minds about it: MySQL is also eating away at Oracle's premium market share, and there is little doubt that many (most?) customers are served very well by MySQL and are reluctant to accept Oracles extortionate license fees for their own RDBMS.

Internet Explorer will Drop below 40%

The market share of Microsoft's preferred browser will continue to be eroded - down to 40% or less. Most of the market share will be lost to Firefox, Chrome and (to some degree) Safari. People's browser choice will be driven by the usual factors:

• Newly installed PCs will have IE (despite the EU Court rulings), and those who simply cannot be bothered to change will still with IE
• Those who consider themselves "internet savy" to any degree will download and install Firefox - many simply because of the AdBlock extension
• The "Bleeding Edge" techies will play with Google Chrome
• Anybody who installs iTunes (because they have an iPaid device) will have Safari installed. Most will abandon it in favour of their previous browser.
• Some nerds (like me) choose "odd" browsers: epiphany, conkeror, konqueror, elinks and others.

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