Russell's posted his predictions for 2005. I didn't bother doing any, as usual, but I have some comments on his. Which I guess is nearly as good as having an opinion of my own.

1. P2P file sharing: I don't see this being a biggie. Mobile doesn't seem to be about files yet - it's only recently stopped being about voice (with text in second place). I don't expect that this music industry will let little things like this prevent them from doing some really silly stuff tho.

2. LBS - every year has been the year of LBS since 2000. I don't think it's going to be around this year, and I don't believe that the applications for it will be as wide-ranging as some do, even when it does show up. In particular I'd disagree with Russell on LBS games: they'll exist, but they'll be novelty or niche for a while and go no further. Gaming is IMHO all about bringing entertainment to players - not forcing them to tramp around the real world trying to find some fun. I have zero actual evidence to back up this claim.

3. SMS - we'll see growth, but the growth will start to slow. It'll become more engrained into society - expect to see more things SMS-enabled, along the lines of banks texting customers with their balance or advertisers rejecting coupons in favour of using phones and mobile couponing.

4. MMS will grow but slowly. It won't be a replacement for SMS by any means, but it will have its uses. Growth will pick up a little as operators get handsets working out-of-the-box, interconnect gets customer confidence, network effects kick in (i.e. most people you know can send and receive MMS), and it becomes impossible to buy a handset which won't do it.

From what I've seen of real-world usage, MMS is just a way of whacking a photo to someone; it's quite quick to do this. The standard may allow for presentations, multiple slides, and text formatting, but MMS is like HTML email only in the sense that these things are never used by customers, only companies using it for corporate or brand communication.

5. Video calling - as network effects kick in, again it gets a little more popular. We start to see apps which actually depend on it, despite the usability issues and lack of flattering cameras. Maybe the killer app for video calling won't be "see me", but "see what I see"?

6. Mobile TV - popular in focus groups but otherwise - yeuch. And it's too expensive and early.

7. Apple - they don't tend to enter markets with me-too products. I'd be surprised if they brought out just a "nice phone", though I could see them doing an iPod and marketing a device at the high-end of the market, to customers who will pay for stylishness and simplicity. Packaging up all the disparate services that a mobile phone offers and making them simple is a big challenge: making a white handset with a touch-dial on it just won't cut it.

8. Mobile marketing: I'm not sure. It'll be resisted by agencies who fear its accountability compared to more airy-fairy media, but people will be experimenting with e.g. branded mobile games. Whether or not mobile marketing works out long-term is not that relevant IMHO: mobile has a commerciality about it which means that it's not just about ad revenue, eyeballs, interruptions, or generating traffic.

9. Blogging gets bigger and we start to see more companies and individuals get involved. Reputation management, syndication and recommendation tools become more important as the blogosphere (spit!) expands and there's more chaff to be sorted through. Google look smug.

10. Mobile phone virus: maybe.

11. Mobile video: Maybe

12. MP3 and Mobile converge: maybe. I'm not sure, the walkman and the mobile phone never converged. I predict that in 2005 I find the "all devices converged into one" vs "separate devices for everything" debate even more boring.

13. DRM - content owners keep praying that it will work. Teenagers and hackers the world over consistently break DRM and invent new means of spreading content.

14. Voice as the 3G killer app? I doubt it (though certainly the cost of making a call on a 3G network should be lower) - but if it is, the operators won't shout about it much.

15. Adult - grows, inevitably.

16. Fixed rate plans - yeah, but maybe not this year. They'll be resisted until some hapless 3G operator cracks.

17. Java portals don't really happen, though we do start seeing interesting Java apps (i.e. those which aren't classic arcade game conversions).

18. WAP keeps growing. There's lots of room for it to continue getting bigger and bigger.

19. Child tracking: will still be around by the end of the year as long as there isn't a high-profile case where it doesn't work (or even worse, reassures parents their kid is safe whilst the exact opposite is true).