Here’s My Own Interpretation

Virtual Reality will turn out to be a dud. Great initial “wow” experience, but ultimately just a big chunk of tech that will collect dust in the corner. At some point (years out) the right mixture of power, size, price, and reality technology will combine into a device that will see mass adoption (likely first in AR not VR).

I have to agree.

VR is going to be something huge, but their adoption/expansion would be very limited to fewer fields while AR is more usable in day to day operations. This is because AR allows you to add more information into your existing field of view. For example, think of an AR-enabling device embedded into your glasses that allows you to find out what’s inside a box based on the QR code stamped outside of the box itself? (and display the virtualized image of the item on top of the box). This has major implication on supply and logistics because it means operators no longer have to waste the time opening the box and checking what’s inside. Think of the industries that will benefit from this: Amazon, FedEx, UPS, IKEA and more. As far as VR goes, your day to day activities will still happen in real life. VR takes you away from your reality, AR helps you making more sense of your current reality.

Cryptocurrency will continue to be used by a niche audience. It’s too technical and doesn’t offer any advantage to the average Joe.

This is debatable.

I can totally see the benefit that cryptocurrency offers (e.g. near zero remittance fee) and how it can kills big players in banking services and payment gateways if it’s allowed more room to grow. The only things that are holding the blockchain wave are the slow rate of adoption and lack of methods in abstracting the transaction process. Big players like VISA, Citibank, HSBC and Nasdaq had invested over $30 millions in blockchain startups so hopefully something good will come out of it.

Eventually they will realize the device they should have built would be more akin to a Fitbit with long battery life and a simple display. At this point they’ll either buy Fitbit or develop their own.

Apple Watch 2 will indeed launch to generate more cash flow,

but I think the wearable market will get more saturated in 2016 since it’s maturing up (e.g. more companies producing cheaper alternatives). I really agree with the point where Apple might make a FitBit-like gadget, think of it like an Apple Watch C that has limited functionalities. I don’t think they will acquire FitBit since their total product sales are nearly on par with each other (in Q2 2015 they sold 3.6M watches, compared to FitBit’s 4.4M) and the existence of the product guarantees a dedicated team/department for it. In fact, Apple has the advantage of producing their own hardware and can improve their product with more available user-generated data like heartbeat and user’s daily activity.

Uber will compete with Yelp. Expect to see Uber recommend you places based on the destination you’ve selected.

I doubt this.

Will compete, maybe, defeating Yelp, maybe not. Yelp’s unfair advantage is the amount of reviews that it has amassed over years of operation. I see more possibilities in them cooperating than competing with each other. Even if they do, it’s more likely for Uber to acquire similar startups to Yelp to improve UberEats.

The Uber delivery and Slack APIs will mature, with that expect serious ($100M+) businesses to be built on the back of these platforms.

Yeah, this will happen.

Slack is seriously aiming to be some sort of every team’s central command by making the chat integrations as powerful as it can be and they have released their own marketplace for apps. There are even predictions that mentioned Slack might be the next Salesforce for SMBs. I have no comments for Uber Delivery so far because I haven’t heard about them recently, but considering that they already have their own fleet of operations now, it’s possible to think of them as a local, on-demand delivery service that’s faster than UPS. This might even be Uber’s ultimate objective to disrupt any transportations/logistics related services.