Every January 1st for the past 9 years, I’ve been getting an email from Microsoft titled “Congratulations 20YY Microsoft MVP!” ( enum YY {Max = 13, Min = 05}; ) where I have the honor and privilege of being re-awarded as Microsoft MVP for Windows Phone Development. This is an awesome way to start the year and 2012 was no exception. It’s been an awesome year in the Windows Phone community and I love that I was able to take a more active part in it this year. I just received my 9th such email yesterday on January 1st 2013 (yay me!) but I’d like to take a look back at 2012 and reflect on some influential moments.

2012 was indeed a great year for me and for Infragistics, and I hope it was for you too. Allow me to indulge in a little retrospective as I contemplate all that transpired in what was supposed to be the last year of our existence. Since the Mayans were (thankfully) wrong about their predictions, I’ll try to offer my own for 2013.

New Job, New Responsibilities, New Products

Shortly after that MVP award announcement in 2012 came more great news: I accepted an offer to work at Infragistics and I joined this awesome company as Senior Product Manager for Mobile & Data Visualization Developer Tools. I joined up with old buddies Jason Beres (who is my new boss) and Ambrose Little, and met many new folks who have become good friends, like Brent Schooley, Brian Lagunas and many others. It was a weird feeling to leave the world of consulting services after 16 of my 20+ years career, but in retrospect, that was the best thing I’ve ever done. 11+ months later I still come to work with a huge smile on my face and I this is the most fun I’ve ever had in my professional career.

Being a Product Manager at Infragistics is a dual role. Not only am I the owner for several products, I also have community responsibilities to write, blog, tweet and speak at events. After several years on hiatus as a blogger, I relaunched “ActiveNick’s Big Bald Blog”, discussing mobility, devices, development in the Microsoft & Apple worlds, events, and more.

Some of my most popular posts this year have been:

• Developing Apps for Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8
• Top 10 iPhone Apps Missing on Windows Phone
• Storage Wars: SkyDrive Doesn’t Work in the Sky
• Infragistics Announces Reduced Pricing for Mobile & Web Products

From a products point of view, it’s been a very busy year for me here at Infragistics. We launched 2 releases of our full NetAdvantage collection, introduced new mobile products for Windows UI, iOS, Android and jQuery Mobile development and many more. Here are all the products I own which we shipped in 2012:

• Two releases of NetAdvantage for Windows Phone: 12.1 & 12.2
• Updates to the Data Visualization controls (charts, maps, gauges, bullet graphs, etc.) which are all now bundled in the following products:
  • NetAdvantage for WPF
  • NetAdvantage for Silverlight
  • Ignite UI (HTML5 & jQuery)
• Introduced New jQuery Mobile controls in Ignite UI
• Launched the initial release of NucliOS for native iOS developers
• Launched Iguana UI, a free Community Pack for native Android developers
• Launched a new bundle for mobile developers: MobileAdvantage
• Introduced new Data Visualization Controls for WinRT & WinJS developers in NetAdvantage for Windows UI Beta

Infragistics also launched many more products I was not directly involved with, including new versions of SharePlus for iOS and the inaugural releases of ReportPlus for iOS and Indigo Studio for UX designers, and many more. Yes, it has been an awesome year at Infragistics.

Community Events

My community role goes beyond tweeting and blogging of course. Traveling to community events and conferences is a key part of my job. As a product manager, it’s important that I connect with developers to hear about the projects they work on, what technologies they care about, and what topics they are interested in learning. It also allows me to spread the word about our awesome Infragistics products, meet current customers and get feedback from them about what we’re doing great and what we could improve upon.

Speaking at events is actually something that I’ve enjoyed for many years, going as far back as 1996 when I did a seminar tour in the province of Quebec, speaking about Internet and intranet development with Microsoft technologies, using Active Server Pages, ActiveX and all the other “Active” products at Microsoft. This is in fact when I was nicknamed “ActiveNick” by co-workers, a name that has stuck around since then. My responsibilities over the last few years at my previous job at Infusion had forced me to scale back my speaking engagements, sticking mostly to DevConnections and TechEd, and sadly neglecting the other conferences, code camps and user groups.

Thanks to my new role at Infragistics, I was able to jump back in the community head first, speaking at and/or attending the following events in 2012:

• Central New Jersey .NET User Group in Cranbury, NJ
• Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, WA
• Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA
• Code PaLOUsa in Louisville, KY
• Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee, WI
• TechBash in Nanticoke, PA
• Stir Trek in Columbus, OH
• Philly Code Camp in Abington, PA
• TechEd US in Orlando, FL
• TechEd Europe in in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• New Jersey Azure User Group in Iselin, NJ
• That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, WI
• Heartland DevCon (HDC) in Omaha, NE
• Prairie DevCon in Regina, SK, Canada
• Visual Studio Live! in Orlando, FL
• NYC Mobile .NET Meetup in Manhattan, NY

I was also scheduled to speak at the Windows Phone Developer Conference in October in San Francisco, which sadly (but understandably) got cancelled/postponed, and I was also forced to cancel my sessions at DevConnections Fall in Las Vegas, but I also had the chance of appearing in a few online webcasts and podcasts, including:

• The Tablet Show Podcast with Carl Franklin & Richard Campbell
• Bytes by MSDN with Jerry Nixon
• AJI Report with Jeff Julian and John Alexander

2012 was an awesome year, and 2013 promises to be even better for Community events. I can confirm that I’m already scheduled to speak at VS Live! Las Vegas in March and VS Live! Chicago in May, and also Code PaLOUsa 2013 in April.

If you want me to speak at your event, code camp or user group in 2013, don’t hesitate to contact me directly at activenick@infragistics.com or via Twitter at @ActiveNick.

Windows Phone, Nokia Devices & WP8

It’s been an interesting year for Windows Phone to say the least. Nokia finally started releasing their long awaited Windows Phone devices, including the Lumia 800 and 900. The problem is these devices came late (March 2012) in the Windows Phone 7.5 cycle that started in Fall 2011, and by then everyone was already wondering about the upcoming Windows Phone 8. Microsoft continued to uphold their veil of secrecy over all things Windows Phone, although they suffered from a lot of leaks in 2012. It looked like Windows Phone was on an upswing in Spring 2012, but it all came to (relative) crashing halt when Microsoft dropped the bomb that none of the current Windows Phone 7.5 devices would be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8. Even those shiny Nokia Lumias we had just bought a couple months before.

What a downer.

Microsoft sometimes suffers from being too honest. Microsoft seeks to emulate Apple to generate buzz in the mobility world, but Microsoft will always be Microsoft, and the two companies work in different ways. Allow me to illustrate the contrast. If an app or the OS suffers from a fault, Microsoft will tell you via an error message and you can often track down a log entry to diagnose it. Apple will just make your app disappear… *poof!* Error messages are bad, so instead of acknowledging the error and help you address it, Apple just sweeps it under the rug, hoping you’ll forget about it as they sprinkle more of that “Apple Magic” dust in your eyes. I prefer the Microsoft way because things will eventually go wrong in a piece of software. The interactions are too complex and errors will occur. Pretending the error didn’t happen is downright arrogant.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this same mentality is what drove Microsoft to announce Windows Phone 7.8. Microsoft’s approach for current devices was to borrow a few great features from Windows Phone 8 (like the new Start screen, tile sizes, Bing lock screen, etc.) and tack them onto Windows Phone 7.5, giving birth to Windows Phone 7.8. Microsoft is too honest. Apple prefers the “let’s fool our customers” approach. When Apple announced iOS 6, they also revealed that older devices would not get all the new iOS 6 features. Yet, Apple still calls this watered-down version of the operating system “iOS 6”. Why couldn’t Microsoft simply take a page from Apple’s dirty book? They could have announced that most current Windows Phone 7.5 devices would be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, except that some new features wouldn’t be available on older devices.

The cold wet towel that is Windows Phone 7.8 basically sent Windows Phone sales to a grinding halt. Why buy a new Lumia now when it’ll be hitting a glass ceiling in the Fall? That was an unfortunate course of events and the slower adoption for Windows Phone in 2012 is what led many analysts to severely scale back their expectations for the next four years.

Windows Phone 8 really has a solid shot at succeeding. This is the fabled “third version” where Microsoft typically gets things right, and while I’ve been a fan of the platform since the initial reboot in 2010, Windows Phone 8 finally reached top contender stage. Nokia brought us new devices, and HTC showed us they actually know how to design a sexy phone. Hopefully Samsung can bring some sexiness to their own devices. They have awesome specs and quality, but they need a phone borne out of the mind of creative designers, not engineers.

The combination of new OS features and new devices finally make Windows Phone much harder to dismiss as “irrelevant”. The good news came late in the year, but this was nonetheless a good year for Windows Phone.

Surface Announcement & Launch

The Surface announcement and launch was a real surprise. Microsoft may have released a LOT of hardware in the past, but nothing comes close to the Surface in terms of involvement or investment (with the exception of Xbox). Microsoft used to be primarily a software company, but we can’t really say that anymore. Sinofsky may be gone, but the Surface remains. For the first time in its history, Microsoft shipped a new version of Windows, Windows Phone and Office and yet none of those are the most talked about product coming out of Redmond within that same calendar year.

Surface is.

I wrote extensively about the Surface and if you have not had a chance to peruse my series titled “From iPad to Surface”, I invite you to do so via the following links.

• From iPad to Surface:
  • Day 1: Acquisition & Setup
  • Day 2: Sandy Killed my Power
  • Day 3: Under the Hood
  • Day 4: Shopping for Apps
  • Day 5: Favorite Fridays >> Nextgen reader
  • Day 6: We Need Groups!
  • Day 7: Screen Quality Face-off
  • Day 8: Top 10 iPad Apps Missing in Windows Store
  • Day 9: Favorite Fridays >> Windows Phone App
  • Landscape vs. Portrait
  • Favorite Fridays >> Google App
  • Head-to-Head Comparison: Surface vs. iPad
• Blog Post: You Want to Buy a Surface, but What is Windows RT?
• Blog Post: Developing Apps for Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8
• Product Page: Infragistics NetAdvantage for Windows UI – Developer Controls for Windows 8 & Windows RT

The jury is still out on Surface and I plan on writing more about it in 2013. I just hope we get a brand new official Mail client because the current one really sucks.

Let’s now dive into my predictions for 2013…

ActiveNick’s Top 10 Predictions for 2013

I’ve never done this publicly before. Like a lot of people, I’ve offered many technology predictions casually through conversations in the past, but those are often more wishful thinking than actual predictions. Given my really bad track record on some of these (e.g. Beta VCRs, NEC TurboGrafx 16, Commodore CDTV, Star Wars Galaxies, Windows Mobile, HD-DVD, etc.) I expect to do really poorly on many of my predictions. Still, let’s have some fun and reflect back on them in a year.

1. Return of the Windows Start Button

I’m probably wrong on this one given how Julie Larson Green was so deeply involved in the UI design of Windows 8 and Windows RT, but I think that now that Sinofsky is out, Microsoft will cave to enterprise pressures and bring back our beloved Start button. This will only be available in Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise, and it’ll come back as an optional feature through some form of service pack or Windows Update. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was only available via enterprise policies / settings.

2. New Apple Devices

The fact that we’ll get new Apple devices is not really a prediction, it’s more like stating the obvious. What will we get though? Or more importantly when it comes to Apple, what WON’T we get? Here is what I think we’ll see from Cupertino in 2013:

• Another iPad Mini, this time with Retina Display and better specs
• New MacBook Air with Retina Display
• iPhone 6 will ship in 2013. I’m not sure what Apple will add, but the screen size & resolution will remain the same, whatever new features Tim Cook introduces will be lifted from Android or Windows Phone, and it still won’t support NFC. Whatever it is, Apple fanbois and fangurls will proclaim “the Apple Magic is still alive” yet Apple’s global market share will remain stagnant.

Oh, and Apple Maps will still suck be inferior to Google, Bing and Nokia Maps. In terms of wishful thinking, I really hope Siri gets an SDK.

3. Windows Phone 9

IDC recently predicted that the worldwide Windows Phone market share will reach a very modest 11.4% in 2016. I think this is a very conservative estimate, especially given the big marketing campaign currently under way and the fact that every single Windows 8 computer and Windows RT device acts as an advertisement  for Windows Phone. The Metro UI and Live Tiles will become more and more familiar to consumers and this will positively affect Windows Phone sales.

Microsoft will probably introduce the Windows Phone 9 OS along with new partner devices, and I predict that all current and future Windows Phone 8 devices will be compatible with it. This will prevent any slowdown in WP8 device sales, something that negatively hurt the platform in 2012. Disclaimer: At this point in time, I know absolutely nothing about any future version of Windows Phone. This is pure speculation on my part.

Based on IDC’s data, Windows Phone is at 2.6% market share today and I predict it’ll climb to 7% by the end of 2013 and officially claim the third spot ahead of RIM in the mobile ecosystem.

4. Nokia Devices

My new Nokia Lumia 920 is as perfect a phone as I’ve ever owned one. But it’s still not perfect. It only has 32GB of storage, no storage card slot, and the battery life could be better. Nokia is not all about devices, they have Nokia Maps and their “Here” location services that bring in a lot of dough after all, but if they want to stay competitive in the phone space, they’ll need more than the current three Windows Phone 8 devices (Lumia 620, 820, 920). We’ve seen rumored concepts for the Lumia 720, and we also know that Nokia wants to bring more of its PureView technology to Windows Phone.

I predict that Nokia will introduce a new wave of Nokia devices in 2013 *before* we see the Windows Phone 9 OS ship, and all these phones will be upgradeable to WP9.

5. Star Trek

The new “Star Trek Into Darkness” movie will be awesome and will rank over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. I really miss having a good Star Trek TV show though, and sadly I don’t see 2013 changing this situation. Hopefully the new HD remasters of Star Trek: the Next Generation will make their way to Netflix.

6. Microsoft Surface 2 & Surface Phone

Microsoft sunk a lot of money in the development of the Surface and while the sales have been good, they have not been iPad-spectacular. Surface Pro also hasn’t been released yet. The question nonetheless remains: will Microsoft ship a “Surface 2” device, and if so, when?

There are already rumors that Microsoft is hiring for such a project and while the current Surface RT is great – though not perfect – there is still room for improvement. I was very doubtful about calling for a new Surface 2 – announcement or launch – in 2013, but now that I think about the potential features, it seems obvious Microsoft can keep raising the bar for other OEMs.

Potential Surface 2 improvements could include:

• High resolution screen, matching the ppi count of Apple’s Retina display on the Newest iPad
• More SKUs with higher storage options, including tablets with 128GB and 256GB built in
• Better battery life
• Built-in NFC
• Built-in GPS
• Improved TouchCover keyboard
• Optional SKUs with cell radios for built-in 4G LTE support

There have also been a lot of rumors about Microsoft manufacturing their own “Surface Phone”. I would really love to see such a device get announced, though it would really create tensions with Nokia and HTC. The bar has also been raised when it comes to Windows Phone and both these manufacturers have proven they can design truly competitive devices.

My call: No Microsoft-branded “Surface Phone” announced or launched in 2013.

7. Xbox 720

There will be a new Xbox in 2013. I really hope they find a better name for it, and I won’t speculate… ok, maybe I will. I’m throwing my own Xbox vNext names into the hat:

• Xbox 3… or 8?
• Xbox Pro
• The New Xbox (just kidding, but this is what Apple would call it)
• Skybox (Xbox in the Cloud, get it?)
• Microsoft Gaming Console 2013 Total Pwnage Edition

Anyways, I have absolutely no knowledge about Xbox vNext, but here is what I think we’ll see in this device:

• More powerful specs (obviously) like CPU, memory, etc. I call for 8-16 cores in the CPU
• Built-in Blu-Ray player and all Xbox game discs will move to the Blu-Ray format
• Full 3D support, complete with 3D glasses and augmented reality. We’ll probably have 2 GPUs to drive the dual image
• Built-in storage will be SSD
• More cloud integration, cloud saves, and the cloud will also be used to tie games to users, thus severely hurting the 2nd hand game market
• Fully compatible with all Xbox 360 games
• The controller will be the same except the D-Pad will be enhanced
• Microsoft Points will go away and we’ll just buy stuff with normal currencies
• A new version of the Kinect sensor will be packaged by default with all SKUs
• Xbox vNext will share a store with Windows, and most Windows Store games will be usable on Xbox. Indie developers will be able to publish Xbox games with the same SDK they use to create Windows Store games today
• XNA won’t be usable (officially) to build Xbox LIVE Indie Games anymore (I hate you Microsoft)
• We’ll see more features added to the Xbox Smartglass apps to truly extend the console for gaming like the Wii U does
• We’ll also get more media content, more TV channels built-in and the ability to use the Xbox as a DVR

I expect Xbox vNext will be announced at E3 and ship in time for Holidays 2013.

8. World of Warcraft and Blizzard’s Project Titan

World of Warcraft will extend it’s free to play offering beyond level 20. I suspect they’ll raise the level cap to 60 for free to play accounts and lift some of the restrictions (e.g. gold cap, whispers) to make it more viable and less of a trial.

We still won’t know what Project Titan is by the end of 2013

9. BlackBerry 10 Smartphones & PlayBook Tablets

Very little is known about the new QNX / BBX / BlackBerry 10 devices and I won’t speculate much. After many delays, BlackBerry 10 should finally be revealed in February but I suspect devices won’t be available commercially until March or April 2013. At the end of the day, it won’t matter much. Microsoft rebooted Windows Phone in 2010 and many pundits called it “too little too late”. How can RIM reboot their platform in 2013 and expect to stop the free fall?

Their only salvation might be if they released their own OS with its own merits, and yet still support Android apps out of the box without any repackaging, hacking or side-loading. Now THAT would be an interesting feat of engineering.

Bottom line: BlackBerry devices will slip to 4th place in the mobile ecosystem market share, and whatever new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is introduced will be as insignificant as the current one.

10. Android, Google, Samsung and Amazon

The Android platform holds a decent share of the tablet market but it’s definitely on smartphones that it dominates, with over 60% of market share. Android is a weird animal since so many versions have been forked or heavily customized by all those who seek to make money with it. What will happen to some of the major Android players in 2013?

• Samsung is the main company making money off Android. They will keep customizing it to their heart’s content, growing farther apart from the rest of the Android ecosystem, like Amazon has done.
• Amazon made Android their own. They forked it and built their own OS on top of it. They have their own UI, their own services, their own marketplace, and it’s all about selling you their content. Expect to see Amazon release newer services for your Kindle Fire tablets to insure you rely less and less on Google. I expect to see an Amazon Email service released in 2013, as well as a cloud-storage solution for consumers, akin to Dropbox or Skydrive.  I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon expand their search engine to go beyond content and include Internet searches as well, competing with Google and Bing.
• Google is quickly losing control of Android and they’ll try to reign things in during 2013, but I don’t see them succeeding very well. They’ll probably just end up releasing more devices of their own with their own Android version. More phone & tablet OEMs will fork Android away from Google and follow Samsung and Amazon since no one is making any significant money with the baseline Android software. Android is winning but Google is losing.

What do you think of my predictions? On target or completely off? Which ones do you agree or disagree with? Which would you add? If you have any questions or comments about this post, the products and technologies discussed or my predictions, you can post them in the comments below or contact me on Twitter at @ActiveNick.

Happy New Year!