A lot of these predictions will be true for a sizable chunk of the population — people well-off and/or tech-savvy enough to jump on the new possibilities — but there will be a substantial part who say, "Hey, I'm happy with what I have, and this new stuff is too confusing."
My thoughts:
1. Blu-ray/DVD players
Maybe. Five years might be too short there. Penetration by streaming video is still a little problematic, the portability issue remains (tablets work, but the power and storage / connectivity-bandwidth for watching a library of movies on the plane or in the back seat of the car is still a ways off), and I think increasing concerns over DRM models and what you actually own will have people reluctant to completely jump into that boat.
Anecdotally: We buy a lot fewer discs these days, for a variety of reasons, but in part because get can get that "one off" watching of a lot of things through existing services (I have so far resisted anything beyond Amazon, since I'm already a Prime member). Kay is more comfortable in streaming things than in slapping a disc in than we are.
2. Stand-alone in-car GPS units
Only to the extent that the folks who enjoy or care to use in-car GPS will be comfortable using it with their phones. Folks who don't have a GPS already aren't likely to get one.
Part of this will be also better integration of phones (across major platforms) into the car's systems.
3. Dial-up Internet
I definitely think so. I'm not quite of the "Broadband is a right!" crowd, but increasingly it's becoming more and more critical to have reasonably fast online capability in order to participate in society (see also #1 on this list).
4. Low-end digital cameras
I think this is already true to some degree. The question will be, what that low end is. We need a good quantum jump in camera power on smartphones in order to let the incredible convenience of always having a camera with you be truly fulfilled by decent zooming and performance.
5. Car keys
On new cars? I think it highly likely. Going the next step to using cell phones? Not without a quantum leap in power/reliability of cell phones (frankly, I don't want to have my phone getting hung up or being out of juice to mean I can't get into my car).
Predicting the future is difficult. I expect to laugh at my predictions in five years …
Reshared post from +John E. Bredehoft
The big news is that people are still using dialup.
5 Tech Products That Will Be Dead in 5 Years | TIME.com
With the speed of innovation in the tech industry, we can’t know every piece of technology that will fill our everyday lives in five years, but we can predict what won’t last.
The GPS on my phone takes the battery from fully charged to totally dead in a matter of a couple of hours, so I leave it off unless it's a dire emergency. For a long trip, stand-alone all the way.
I do think Bluray is probably going to be the last physical standard, and that DVD is going to continue to be around for a while. I don't want to purchase my entire collection yet again. I'm only upgrading stuff I already have on DVD to Bluray when I find a screaming deal, or if it's the kind of favorite where I'd be interested in new special features.
I don’t understand the mania for streaming. Watch something once for £5, or repeatedly for £10
@LH – When it’s convenient, that may be a better bargain. Wanting to catch a particular flick, but don’t have any sense that you’ll ever want to see it again? Saving £5 by streaming it isn’t a bad deal (and doesn’t clutter your shelves, either).
+Brittany Constable Battery life / car system docking and charging is definitely a consideration. We have a charger plugged into our dashboard, and we did the trip to/from California on just GMaps on our phones, but that's not always convenient and it's an additional piece of equipment to be lugging about.
Agreed on the collection thing, and DVDs and BluRays are both more compact and less fragile over time than VHS tapes. But if the convenience factors for streaming continue to increase (consolidated collection access, for example), to the point where consumers buy more new stuff that way, it will be quite a tipping point.
I think I'm weird in that I watch most of my stuff through streaming, but I keep buying physical media. Mainly I like having it there because streaming libraries seem to be somewhat inconsistent, but I'm also super pretentious and like showing off the size of my library.
I'm still enough mentally on the old model that I still like buying the discs if I think I'm going to watch it ever again.
On the other hand, I look at both music and books and their migration into the e-realm. For books, I'm now only rarely buying new paper books, but I don't just rely on the Amazon cloud but keep backups myself.
For music, all my old CDs are ripped and down in storage, and for the most part now I just buy downloadable MP3s. I don't do any music streaming at present.
With movies, I'll stop buying discs when I can easily download and keep the movie files. That's a jump or two ahead in storage and bandwidth technology, as well as DRM models.
I have a Sony Vaio E-Series (very fast) 8.1 touchscreen laptop, but still use my very old cell phone (Windows 6, ancient by today's standards) via Bluetooth as a modem. This is mostly because, having grown up very poor, I'm more than a little frugal, and I only replace things when they no longer work. Besides, I'm on a reasonably-priced ($57/mo) unlimited cell phone plan, which I have to pay whether I use it as a modem or not. When I tested my internet speed recently, it was 1mpbs download, <1mbps uploads, so it's incredibly slow.
It actually works fine on sites like Netflix, believe it or not, but it's terrible on YouTube. I guess I probably should get broadband since I have such a great laptop and can easily afford it; but to me, it's an unnecessary expense.