Checking my crystal balls

Summer is upon us, and it's time to do mid-year revision of my predictions for 2014 (last year I got 6 out 7 right).

Wearables - tick
Samsung's Gear 2, Moto 360 by Motorola, G watch by Google (developed by LG), One by HTC and iWatch by Apple are going to hit the shelves soon. None of those smartwatches support mass transit or mobile payments (iWatch could be an exception - Apple are a clever bunch), but there is another company that is working on those use cases, with planned release in Q4.

Wearables could have far-reaching implications: for payments, commerce, mass transit, access control, security, etc. They could form the bridge between the Internet of Things (connected devices) and "mere mortals". A subject for another blog post.

Digital currencies - pending
Bitcoin-related startups are still making waves (and are getting ridiculous "land-grab" funding from VCs), but nothing new or interesting. MintChip has been shelved. I guess I need to review my definition of "digital currency"...

BLE + NFC - tick
iPhone 6 will have NFC. Ditto. But that (still) doesn't mean much.

Apple to enter payments - (almost) tick
You'll see what I mean in September.

mPOS to lose market share - pending
Once EMV tokenization gains steam and Apple comes into the picture, millions of those dongles will be gathering dust...

Card-present e-commerce - pending
Again, EMV tokenization specs are here, they just need to filter through the system.

Uber-wallet - hm, not so sure now... 
Well, the likes of Coin are still working on the launch (and the likes of Clinkle are not going anywhere for now), but that's not what I meant by "uber-wallet". In fact, just as with digital currencies, I need to review the definition of "uber-wallet"...

This year, I have nothing to add to the list: the market has been rather "stale", with most of the excitement coming from "Uber vs taxis" war - also a subject for a separate post, with some interesting lessons for the banking industry...