PREDICTION: The iPhone Revolution of 2009

There's a lot out there I think is likely to happen this year, but the most important one I'd like to write about is the coming iPhone Revolution.

2007 saw the introduction of iPhone. 2008 saw the addition of the App Store. 2009 will see the introduction of push notifications. David Pogue, among others, heralded the App Store as one of the greatest "inventions" of the year, but no one has yet been talking about how big a deal push notifications will be.

My prediction is at Macworld in San Francisco next week Apple will launch the push notification service and, the same day, demo some Apps using the service, like Facebook and Fring.

Push notifications will revolutionize the way we use cell phones. In less than a year I expect text messages, which cost the carriers virtually nothing to send, will largely be a thing of the past. The ability to send an SMS over your chat application will eliminate the need for text messages. I think it's likely the carriers will offer "unlimited" texting plans on the cheap in a last ditch effort to wring a couple more dollars out of text messages.

The ability for iPhone Apps to interact with you even when they're not open is enormous. It will be like turning on instant notifications for everything. Everything from feed readers to sports score tracking Apps will be able to send you notifications of things when they happen. Watch as Facebook/Twitter updates finally explode into a mainstream phenomenon used by everyone, all the time.

I think its also likely Apple will bring Web Apps into the fold. It has already been demonstrated that with a bit of code it's possible to save a Web page to your home screen that functions like a native App once its reopened. If Apple extends the push notifications service to Web Apps, there's no reason why a Web App couldn't rival the functionality of a native App.

For the last year and a half other cell phone makers have been trying to play catch up with little success. First they tried to make a touch screen phone that was an iPhone killer, then they tried to release their own App Stores, now they've got to deal with push notifications available to the sizable Apple developer community. Cell phone makers, which are already two steps behind, will be forced to play catch up. Again.

Apple would be stupid (and they're not stupid) not to capitalize on the failure of the cell phone companies to catch up. It simply makes fiscal sense to release a more varied product line. In 2009, an iPhone nano and an Mac Tablet running Snow Leopard starts to make a lot of sense.

The Apple we see in a year might look nothing like the Apple we know now. And, thanks to them, the way we communicate with each other could be drastically different come 2010.

I can't wait for Mobile iChat via a front facing camera - but I expect that's a post for Jan. 1 2010.