As technology users welcome 2012 everywhere, it’s clear the year that had just passed was filled with no little controversy and memorable incidents.

From Steve Jobs’ death to the delay of the much-awaited iPhone 5, from the rise of Android devices to Nokia’s return with its Windows Phone devices, and finally, with the potent mix of mobile devices and social media that  helped ignite protests in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, but also encouraged the thuggery of the London riots, 2011 was a big year in technology.

The next 12 months look to be just as interesting, as existing technologies mature and grow, while other new trends emerge. Here are five things to look out for in 2012:

1. The arrival of the “transform” device
Just a few years ago, it was unfathomable that people would junk their desktop PCs for laptops. Because the portable device had a smaller screen and usually lesser computing prowess, the portable device never matched up to the silent giant under the desk.

These days, however, with power-efficient yet advanced CPUs and graphics chips, laptops can do the job just as well, plus they can be hooked up with a monitor, keyboard and mouse easily to transform into a desktop PC in a jiffy.

The same is happening with tablets and smartphones. In 2012, there will be more devices like the Motorola Atrix, first unveiled in early 2011, that basically turns into a laptop once it is docked with a laptop dock. The Atrix taps on its dual-core chip to run Webtop, which is based on Ubuntu Linux, to give users a regular desktop OS look and feel. It runs the OS you prefer at any time, all in one device.

Essentially, you only need one smart device – your phone or tablet – to do everything you need in future. What you will have are many docks or keyboards and screens to hook up to this increasingly powerful (expect quad core gizmos in 2012, starting with the Asus Transformer Prime) yet portable device in your hands.

Desktops and laptops will definitely still be around, but the mobile gadget is set to be the central device in your life.

2.  Windows 8 brings “touch” on everyday PCs
Related to this portable device rush is Windows 8. The upcoming Microsoft OS, expected this year, is being billed as the biggest upgrade in years for one reason – it is going to unify both mobile devices and PCs with one OS.

It works with touch, and features a Windows Phone-like tile system, where users will be given a panel of information and the ability to go into the nitty gritty only if they wish to. The big icons and friendlier interface also mean that this is the first time the Start button and taskbar – at least in their present forms – will be out of the picture.

Along with Windows 8′s arrival, expect computing of all types – from smartphones to laptops to desktops – to tap on the novel OS.

What to expect? Look to something like the Samsung Slate PC, which crams a powerful Intel dual-core CPU into a thin, portable tablet that can be hooked up with a keyboard and screen to become a full-fledged desktop. It runs Windows 7 now, but come next year, devices like these will sport the even more touch-friendly Windows 8.

3. Tougher times for Apple
It’s not just Steve Jobs’ passing that will affect Apple for the coming year, but also the fact that it is a company that wins big because of the very sharp innovation curve that it sets out each year.

When the iPod was commoditised, the iPhone became the next big thing; when Android smartphones managed to grab huge chunks of market share in 2010, the iPad became the market-conquering portable gizmo in a class of its own.

The question in 2012 is: what next? Surely, there’d be new versions of the iPhone (after the disappointing iPhone 4S) and iPad (which still has a good lead over all over Android rivals). But can these upgrades keep Apple at the top of the pile, or will it see its innovation and design lead cut short in 2012?

The emergence of the Windows-based Ultrabooks in 2011 from Asus, in particular, is a clear answer to how fast the competition is catching up, in this case, with the MacBook Air.

In the next 12 months, Apple will find the going even tougher. Users are often willing to accept Apple’s closed “my way or the highway” approach because of the perceived better design and innovation from the company, but it has to keep coming up with new winners to redefine the field. In 2012, it needs another big winner to pull away.

4. Say hi again to a smart TV
It’s been prophecised several times before, but 2012 could finally see the arrival of smart TVs that do more than just show your cable TV programmes or Blu-ray movies in all their 60-inch Full HD glory. These TVs could be the conduit to many services and apps that were just becoming common in 2011.

Yes, Facebook will be there, as will Twitter and other PC-based services and apps that you had seen on your 2011 Samsung or LG TV when you were free enough to venture into some of its sub menus. But what about YouTube, or rather, a YouTube-type service – on steroids?

Think of an app that is smart enough to offer the same multi-tasking you’d expect on a PC screen, say, talk to a friend on a chat window while watching a live football match, or checking out background information from Wikipedia on the JFK assassination, if you are watching a documentary on it on a National Geographic app, for example.

Not so new, I hear you say? The main difference this time is that the intelligence is built into the TV and possibly delivered straight to the screen – over the TV’s Net link – instead of via a third-party set-top box and third party broadcaster.

Sure, it’d be a leap of faith for content executives who have always preferred to work with their favoured “platform partners”, i.e. broadcasters like StarHub and SingTel.

But for indie channels and content owners looking to jumpstart their work by showing their programmes direct to viewers, they can now create their own content and app and reach out to viewers – in the same way cellphone app developers sell their apps direct to users.

Creating a smart TV programme would thus involve skills needed to develop an app for, say, the mobile phone or tablet. Will this model work for TV? Well, it’s already proven already by Apple and Google in their respective app marketplaces, and what’s there to stop you paying S$2 for a movie on a smart TV, just like you’d buy an app on your phone?

If rumours hold true and Apple decides to create its own TV set in 2012 or if Google takes YouTube to the big screen by signing up more content creators as it has done in 2011, then the next 12 months could see big changes in the way video content is created, delivered and consumed in the big screen in the living room.

5. Fibre broadband takes off in Singapore
This is a banker of a trend, because we know that 95 per cent of the city will be covered by the fibre optic network this year. Going by the long waitlist to turn on a fibre broadband service now – up to a month with M1, we are told by users – the demand for light-speed downloads is going to be even higher in 2012.

It helps, of course, that the network has finally forced open a market that once was dominated by SingTel and StarHub.

Take M1, for example. It used to have to rent the network from the two telcos, but now it can get wholesale access at the same price as its bigger rivals, and it can price its services competitively, as a result. Its S$39-a-month 100Mbps fibre plan sold at computer expos in 2011, for one, has become the benchmark to follow in 2012.

Couch potatoes in Singapore will find it easier to switch pay-TV operators come March 2012, when new rules unveiled today kick in to prevent operators from locking in users with long-term or punitive subscription plans.

The media authorities said today that operators would no longer be allowed to lock in consumers with subscription contracts longer than two years.

While they still have to pay for terminating a subscription early, this payment will be based on the length of time left on the contract, on a month by month basis, and subject to the discounts they received at sign-up.

Currently, users often end up paying the full amount for terminating a subscription, which varies in the hundreds of dollars, even if they are in the final month of the contract.

Though the new rules revealed by the Media Development Authority (MDA) will not encourage viewers to switch overnight, they will find it much easier to do so next year, when it becomes clearer which pay-TV operator, or operators, will be showing live Barclays Premier League football on the telly.

Rights to the hottest TV content here go up for bidding again next year and the two biggest operators – SingTel and StarHub – could end up both broadcasting the matches should a content sharing deal be struck, like the one for the World Cup last year.

With less onerous contracts tying them down, viewers will be much freer to switch to any one operator, no matter which one wins the rights to the live football screenings.

Certainly, that seems to be the goal for the MDA, which said today that pay-TV viewership has grown from 490,000 in December 2006 to more than 857,000 today.

Consumers already enjoy the same rights when it comes to mobile or broadband contracts, thanks to similar rules pushed through separately by the infocomm authorities in March 2010.

The new rules for pay-TV will spell things out even more clearly for telcos, since they often bundle pay-TV services along with mobile, broadband and home telephone services in what are termed quadruple-play packages.

SingTel and StarHub are the two main pay-TV players in Singapore, while M1 also sells a limited package of programmes as part of its broadband offering.

Walk into a Japanese phone store just a few years ago and you’d likely see lots of “locally-made” models by manufacturers like NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp and Panasonic. Branded as phones by NTT DoCoMo or other telcos in the land, these phones often sported the familiar clamshell design with an ultra-thin frame.

Turn up in Japan now, years after the Apple iPhone first made it as a successful “foreign-made” device, and you’ll easily spot a Samsung Galaxy SII and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc among the most popular of all smartphones.

While the clamshell smartphone still has its place in a corner of the store, the obvious hot choice for many Japanese consumers now is big-screen touch-based models. Not surprising, considering that there are more phone users than PC users in the country and many use the phone to surf the Net instead of the PC.

Here’s a look at some of the interesting models Techgoondu saw on a recent trip to an NTT DoCoMo shop in Tokyo. Unfortunately, many of them are either not here yet in Singapore, or likely won’t make it here.

Click on the pictures below to zoom in.

You shoot a video on site in Los Angeles during the day.

By evening, the unedited footage is sent to a backend processing center in Asia, where they proceed to work on it till the wee hours of the morning.

By morning, the video is ready to be distributed all around the world.

This is the promise of what an interconnected world can do. Similar to the outsourcing of call centres to India, the media industry is shifting work — like backend content formatting and distribution – to Asia.

And this digital media industry is booming.

At a press luncheon last week, Encompass Digital Media, a global broadcast service provider, announced plans for an estimated US$20 million investment plan into Singapore to grow its venture in the region.

This will be used to upgrade Encompass’ technology infrastructure like the Singapore facility, which at 88,000 square feet is the largest digital media hub in Asia. It will also be used to grow the employee base from 140 to 200 by the end of 2016.

According to Deepakjit Singh, manging director of Encompass Singapore, revenue growth in Asia has increased year on year by 15 to 20 percent in the last two to three years.

The business potential is so good that they in fact had to turn away last minute customers who turned up the Broadcast Asia 2011 show to see them.

It wasn’t that case when they first started out three years ago in the region.

“No one would turn up at our booth at Broadcast Asia,” explained Deepakjit, as then when they started out few had heard of them.

From starting out as a backend facility for Discovery Channel, Encompass Asia has grown its customer base more than 10 times since then.

But the industry is a cut-throat one, and according to Deepakjit, if they do not “continually innovate”, they will be overtaken by hungrier competitors in the region.

For now, as the business is a volume game, Encompass Asia is in a sweet spot as it managed to “get critical mass” in the market.

Said Deepakjit: “It’s cheaper for me to add a channel for distribution than any of my competitors as we’ve already spent on our infrastructure.”

He also cited Singapore’s political stability and strong intellectual property laws as reasons why citing a media hub in Singapore made good business sense. Encompass Asia is not funded by the Singapore government in any way.

“They’ve been very supportive of what we do here,” he said.

Driving a bulldozer over a bunch of illegal set-top boxes seems to be part of the job of an assistant vice-president in StarHub these days, a photo that we just received from the company appears to suggest.

We’re told later that AVP for pay-TV services, Andrea Tay, didn’t really operate the bulldozer – because you need a licence for that – but instead she was posing as part of a StarHub campaign to show how it is dealing with the persistent threat of pirated pay-TV boxes.

At a Kranji recycling company this morning, the company destroyed about 3oo set-top boxes bound for Singapore homes. According to a StarHub spokesman, they were intercepted at various customs checkpoints on separate occasions and rounded up for destruction today, though she declined to say when these boxes were picked up. 

Last year, StarHub also won two separate copyright infringement cases involving set top boxes here in Singapore, where a small number of people still get tempted to pay a few hundred bucks in exchange for a pirated set-top box that tunes in to all channels on cable TV.

The boxes destroyed today were presumably able to crack the encryption that StarHub had on its all-digital system, which had been touted as a more secure way to keep out pirates.

The telecom operator, which offers cable modem and cable TV services to homes in Singapore, has been battling piracy over the years.

In 2004, industry group Casbaa estimated that as many as 10,000 such illegal boxes existed in Singapore, though over the years, the problem has become smaller, possibly due to tighter copyright laws and general affluence. In 2009, a report by the same association claimed that there were 5,300 such illegal “individual connections” in Singapore.

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Have the past 12 months just zoomed by?

Unfortunately, they have passed before we had a chance to look back in wonder. If there’s something last minute that you haven’t done in 2010, there are less than 24 hours left today to get it done.

One thing that Techgoondu will be doing is to move to a new server host, which will offer faster access to readers who come to this site for news, commentary and insights into the latest tech happenings.

We’ll be doing this in the coming days and weeks, because we could not finish the job in the previous year/decade!

In 2011, things are going to be even more exciting with both personal and enterprise tech going in new, unchartered directions.

In personal computing, think of a wave of new tablets to be launched in just a week’s time at this year’s CES. A month later, at the yearly Mobile World Congress in February, dual-core smartphones with improved operating systems are set to grab the headlines.

For corporations, 2011 looks to be another year where “next-gen” computing platforms involving the cloud continue to gather steam. Whether this is a “private cloud”, a “public cloud” or even a “hybrid cloud”, the buzzwords are likely to melt away as real deployments – rather than just talk – start grabbing the headlines in 2011.

So, there’s a lot to be excited about as we bid 2010 a fond goodbye. It has been a crazy 12 months, with Techgoondu’s unique views going to over 5,000 a day at its peak, thanks to the intense interest in tablet computers and smartphones.

The year will also be remembered for how Singapore almost didn’t even have the World Cup on the telly, for the country joining an elite club of nations with fibre optic broadband at home, and perhaps also for Steve Job’s unhappy iPhone 4 saga.

Other things intrigued us too, like when Windows Phone 7 was launched in October to offer a much-needed boost to Microsoft’s mojo, while Techgoondu supported its first industry conference – UNWIRED 2010 – in May.

Look out for UNWIRED 2011 in the new year, and check back often for a lot more cool articles to come from Techgoondu. 2011 will be even more interesting, we promise.

Thank you for reading us. And here’s wishing everyone of our Techgoondu readers good health and “good tech” in 2011!

After years of talking about it, Singapore’s number three telco finally joined the market for pay-TV services on Thursday with a relatively safe and small lineup of TV programmes, along with a slate of casual games for the family.

While M1′s service does not have the stellar A-list of football or movie content, its success or failure in pay-TV could be a test of how competitive Singapore’s new telecom landscape will be, after being reshaped with new next-gen broadband services and changes to exclusive pay-TV content deals this year.

M1′s new service, called 1box, is very much targeted at the family and is available to its ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line), cable modem and fibre optic users. Programmes include education content for primary school students at S$2 a month per channel, music concerts featuring Lady Gaga and Coldplay for about S$5 a month, plus pay-per-view movies for S$2 to S$5 a month.

The lineup looks lightweight now when compared to the extensive movies and sports content that rivals SingTel and StarHub have. But to be fair, SingTel’s war-chest in bringing TV to its quad/triple-play suite of services is hard to match, while StarHub has been in the pay-TV business for more than a decade, the majority of those years as a monopoly as Singapore Cable Vision.

Thus M1′s move appears more strategic than game-changing, for sure. Its entry into the fray is not going to shake up the market for now, but things could get interesting when exclusive content contracts that SingTel and StarHub have drawn up with the likes of Discovery, HBO and the English FA Premier League expire in the coming months and years.

To recap, the Media Development Authority (MDA) ruled in March this year that exclusive deals are to be scrapped in favour of pay-TV operators carrying one another’s programmes on their own set-top boxes. The aim: consumers to get what they want on one set-top box, instead of being tied to several operators to watch, say, Discovery Channel or the Barclays Premier League.

Now that it’s in the game, M1 could conceivably carry some of SingTel’s or StarHub’s content when the government regulator finally gets its content-sharing ruling in action in the first half of next year. It’s been pushed back from September this year, no thanks to rumblings from content owners, but the MDA appears to have gone too far ahead to turn back to the bad old days of ruinous exclusive deals now.

Crucially, one of the rules that MDA has put forward is that a pay-TV operator has to have at least 10,000 subscribers to be able to carry the exclusive content. That means M1 has to get 10,000 subscribers in the next six to seven months before it can ask for SingTel’s or StarHub’s programmes to be shown on its 1box service.

Is that do-able? Very much so.

Let’s look at some numbers. Between July and September this year, SingTel roped in 25,000 new subscribers on mio TV, adding up to 245,000. While M1 won’t grow as fast without SingTel’s live BPL matches, 10,000 subscribers is within the means of a company that can upsell to its close to 1.9 million mobile and fixed line customers.

However, the first thing I would suggest to M1 is to waive or reduce the box rental fees, which cost between S$5 and S$12 a month for its broadband customers. Sure, it has to make money back from the cost of these boxes, but why not consider them sunk cost, like part of a cellphone network, that can bring in future revenues?

M1 can take a lesson from SingTel, which provides its HD set-top boxes for free as long as customers subscribe to a minimum of about S$16 a month. Like SingTel a few years ago, M1 is a new kid on the block that needs to get boxes into homes, and that S$5 to S$12 a month is going to be a major roadblock. It should at least offer an option to waive set-top box charges once a user hits a minimum monthly charge, as in SingTel’s case.

If nothing else, the hope is that M1 will be the first to seriously test the content-sharing rules that the MDA has put out and attracted so much controversy from incumbents StarHub and SingTel, as well as industry lobby groups like Casbaa, this year.

Sure, M1 will be doing its bid to boast of a “quad-play” suite of services that include mobile, home broadband, residential voice and pay-TV. But for consumers, including non-M1 customers, the new entrant’s success or failure in pay-TV could well be a test of how competitive Singapore’s shifting telecom and content market can be.

If M1 buggers out as MDA continues to mull over the content sharing deals come next year, then it’s very likely SingTel and StarHub will remain the dominant forces, safely protected by their exclusive pay-TV deals, new next-gen broadband network or no. If M1 succeeds in landing key content like football on its network, consumers can expect telcos to fight it out harder for their dollar in the years ahead.

Singapore will be running a S$5 million, year-long trial of 3D TV from today, just months after the first 3D TVs started going on sale here at retail stores.

The trial will be run by broadcasters SingTel, StarHub and Mediacorp, said Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, at the opening of the CommunicAsia show this morning.

This means some lucky trial users from the industry will be among the first here to don their stereoscopic 3D glasses to view 3D content made in Singapore.

We’re not sure how many couch potatotes will excited by it, but this year’s National Day Parade will be recorded in 3D and expected to be viewable in the more realistic viewing mode. Great news if you’re a fan of the yearly extravaganza.

More seriously, it’s a good thing Singapore is spending dollars to develop content, talent and media services for 3D programmes, since other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have already broadcast 3D programmes like football matches, in the past 12 months.

Details are still sketchy for the Singapore trial now, and it is unclear if this industry-based move will bring 3D content to actual home users, like the nationwide high-definition TV (HDTV) trial of four years ago, which enabled viewers to watch the last World Cup in HD.

For the new 3D TV trial, broadcasters “may choose to extend the trial to include consumers,” said an MDA press release.

What we do know is that TV makers such as Samsung, LG and Sony will be really happy that sales of 3D TV sets have got a nice push here.

No, it is not SingTel and StarHub you should be angry with. Nor should you fret that the S$66 package – at about S$1-a-match – to watch the World Cup on the telly is four times more than what you had paid in 2006.

Rather, the best reason to switch off from next month’s football extravaganza is because you, the Singapore football fan, have been taken for a ride.

And unless you vote with your remote, prices for sports programming and other pay-TV offerings in future will go further north, after these World Cup deals announced last Friday.

When prices go up, there’s usually a good reason. For the World Cup 2010 broadcasts, why Singapore viewers are paying more is because FIFA believes folks here have always paid so much and thus can continue to pay more than what the rest of the world does.

Put simply, we are suckers eager to be ripped off.

Just look across the border to Malaysia, where the free-to-air RTM TV station is broadcasting a good number of the matches on the telly. Why not look at Italy, too, where there’s one match shown on free-to-air TV a day?

Okay, you say these countries are not as rich as Singapore. What about New Zealand, which is getting 22 matches on free-to-air, or Australia, where the matches are shown on free-on-air TV on SBS?

There is no other way to see it. Football fans in Singapore, in their desire for live football, have driven prices up to a point where rights owners can hold out for one of the highest per-capita premiums in the world.

In the end, Singapore broadcasters are said to have paid S$21 million for World Cup 2010 rights – more than four times the estimated S$5 million that StarHub coughed up in 2006.

What ends up now is a no-win situation for all but FIFA and its Asian representative for the World Cup 2010, Football Media Services (FMS).

Don’t hate StarHub and SingTel. Be grateful they did not rush in to pay the S$40 million FIFA had initially asked for. But now, with just weeks away to market their broadcasts to advertisers and viewers, how much of the costs can they recoup? I’d be worried as a shareholder.

And couch potatoes, long angered by the ever increasing prices demanded by sports rights owners, are boycotting the World Cup. To rally football fans here, a Facebook page started just days ago now has more than 3,000 supporters.

This sorry episode has laid bare the problems entrenched in Singapore’s pay-TV market for years. While prices spiralled out of control, the biggest loser has been the football fan.

And that is where change has to start from, for the sake of being able to watch football on the telly at reasonable prices in future. Say no to World Cup prices that have been manipulated by FIFA, and which have come about under the watch of previously hands-off government regulators.

Remind the Media Development Authority (MDA) it has a duty to Singapore viewers, by preventing the pay-TV market from being distorted, at their expense.

In Britain, where the cost of watching football on the telly has long been an issue, the government regulator Ofcom finally made key changes to the market this year to level the playing field.

In recent months, it has forced BSkyB to cut the price that it wholesales its premium content to rivals by more than 20 per cent. This translates directly to discounts for viewers, including football fans following the Barclays Premier League.

Sure enough, powerful broadcasters and their content partners will challenge Ofcom’s rulings. But the move is a sign that people, and finally, government regulators who represent them, have had enough of pay TV prices set by greed, not real cost.

This has to be the model for MDA, as it fulfills its role as a regulator acting in the interest of Singapore viewers. The banning of exclusive pay-TV content in March, which finally put an end to costly bidding exercises, is a start.

Sadly, by that stage, content owners have long got used to Singapore paying high prices, and FIFA was not ready to change in an instant for World Cup 2010.

Ultimately, change has to come from the viewer. And that is why I am saying no to the World Cup on my telly at home. There’s no other way if I want prices to be more reasonable in future.

Singapore football fans are finally getting all the live matches for World Cup 2010, after the country almost ended up as one of a handful that could not reach a deal with FIFA to broadcast the world’s biggest football show.

In the end, StarHub and StarHub are said to have ironed out a deal that will cost them about US$15 million (S$21 million), which is half the S$40 million asking price that had been reported earlier.

Should football fans rejoice? Let’s do the sums.

For the 2006 World Cup, StarHub is said to have paid US$5 million for the rights for the month-long event. Its asking price to subscribers then: S$15 for early-bird sign-ons and S$25 subsequently.

This time round, would viewers have to pay more? It looks certain, though StarHub will probably not heap the entire 3x increase in its costs directly on viewers.

By most measures, S$60 to S$100 to watch 64 matches in a World Cup where Singapore is not even part of is a bit rich for most fans, bar of course, the very rich ones.

That’s also considering that the final few matches – the semi-finals, third-place play-off and final – should be shown on Mediacorp’s free-to-air channels, if FIFA lives up to its promise of bringing football to the masses.

Should this be hailed as a triumph for content sharing in Singapore? I’d say a qualified “yes”.

If StarHub and SingTel had gone in with competitive bids, instead of a joint one, then surely, we’d be looking at even higher fees to be paid to Football Media Services (FMS), the Asian representatives of FIFA for World Cup 2010.

Singapore telcos were being asked to pay more – at the highest dollar per capita – simply because the earlier SingTel-StarHub bidding war for Barclays Premier League rights had yielded such fat profits for the rights owners.

The Singapore market suddenly looked like a succulent chunk of meat to content owners – they believed they could ask for crazy prices because of the distorted and unhealthy type of competition going on here.

Now, none of this would have happened had the pay-TV market been regulated with a more enlightened approach. Up until last month, the authorities had simply shrugged shoulders and said the market would correct itself.

Well, it had not. Indeed, it had become worse, until urgent action from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts to reverse course and start ruling out exclusive pay-TV deals here.

So there is good news for football fans and indeed pay-TV users in Singapore.

This lower World Cup bid, though still high by many measures, has at least shown that the Singapore market, and by extension, its viewers, are not absolute suckers for content owners to rip off.