Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – 5 Tech Predictions for 2021

Let’s be honest, putting technology to one side, 2020 has been a bit of a crap year. All going well though, 2021 will (generally speaking) prove to be a lot better. And not only in terms of new releases, but also the basic fact of actually having things both in stock and available to buy! Fingers crossed! –

In something that has become a tradition here at eTeknix, however, while I’ve never been afraid to voice my opinion, I have regularly given you a small slice of my (so-called) industry expertise by making some pretty bold predictions for what I expect to see over the coming year.

Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – 5 Tech Predictions for 2021

So, in this list, I’m going to be guessing at (or more accurately, predicting) 5 things that I think are going to be big news in the tech world throughout 2021. In order to keep things interesting, I always try to avoid the obvious and, if at all possible, try and climb out very far on some more than dubious limbs.

So, in giving my crystal balls a quick polish, what do I think 2021 has in store for us? – Let’s find out!

Prediction #1 – Google Will Discontinue the Stadia!

Since it’s release in late-2019, I think it’s pretty fair to say that the Google Stadia received a very tepid response both from both consumers and critics. Put simply though, the vast majority of the streaming consoles problems have largely boiled down to two major points:

• Good internet is a 100% must – Without it, you’re going to have a bad time!
• It still has a notably poor library of games

In all honestly, I don’t actually know anyone who owns a Google Stadia and, perhaps indicative of why I’ve put it on this list, whenever I have been asked (on the rare occasion someone remembers this actually exists) if they should get one, I can’t honestly say that I’ve been able to recommend it.

While Google clearly has a lot of money and resources thrown into this, I simply can’t imagine that anyone in senior management at the company is happy with how things are progressing. And while they may not actually end the service in 2021, unless something pretty substantial happens, I’d be willing to bet that they’ll quietly announce its discontinuation by the end of the year… and nothing of value was lost.

Prediction #2 – AMD Will Hit a 47% Desktop CPU Market Share!

Borrowing from a prediction I got wrong (but ever so nearly right) last year, it’s pretty clear that AMD Ryzen is finding a very happy home with a lot of PC consumers. In a nutshell, since the launch of the first-generation Ryzen platform back in 2017, at the time of writing AMD has seen a huge spike in their desktop market share with the figure teetering around the 38-40% mark. A pretty substantial gain considering that prior to Ryzen, it was at an all-time low of around 17%.

Undoubtedly, the release of the highly-excellent Ryzen 5000 series will help creep that number even higher over the next couple of months. Albeit, we daresay Intel will have something to say about it when their Alder Lake-S platform arrives in early-mid 2021.

While I don’t think AMD will ever quite manage to get over that magical 50% mark for at least the foreseeable future, if they don’t hit 47% by the end of this year, I will be exceptionally surprised!

Prediction #3 – Noctua Will FINALLY Release an AIO Liquid Cooler – And it’ll be Awesome!

Noctua represents arguably the most premium brand when it comes to air-based CPU coolers. There is, after all, a good reason why we at eTeknix regularly use their products in both our test and home systems. For more than a few years, however, the beige-themed company has been making more than a few overtures at getting involved in the world of AIO liquid cooling.

From inside information I’ve regularly heard from numerous industry sources, many Noctua AIO designs have actually already been created, but because they didn’t meet their own exceptionally high standards, all of them were scrapped! – I do, however, suspect that Noctua may have taken air-cooling as far as it can possibly go and, from that, the only logical progression to continue to blow the market away is through the release of an AIO cooling product.

Putting this on my list is a huge gamble, because at the time of writing, there is nothing to suggest anything is even close to being on the radar. I suspect, however, that 2021 may finally be the year in which Noctua lands onto a design that is deemed ‘good’ in their eyes. And, by proxy, this means that it will almost certainly have all the potential to be the best cooler around – Period!

Prediction #4 – Despite AMD’s ‘Big Navi’ Nvidia will Continue to Dominate the GPU Landscape

With the recent(ish) release of the AMD Radeon 6000 graphics cards, after many years of trying, Team Red finally has a GPU range that is truly competitive with the best that Nvidia has to offer. That is, however, only one small step in what is clearly a long and difficult path.

If you are currently in the market of needing a new graphics card (or perhaps just an upgrade), then we can honestly say (putting specific prices to one side) that there is a good argument to be made for both the new AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. Consumers, however, are often creatures of habit. As we noted above in regards to the CPU market share, it took AMD 4 years of consistent Ryzen CPU releases to get to a stage where their market share is coming into a point of real significance against Intel. For graphics cards though, with releases between generations often being significantly greater, this is going to be a much harder battle to win!

With AMD currently sitting on around a 21.8% desktop graphics card market share, even despite the excellent Radeon 6000 GPUs available, I simply can’t see this figure increasing by any more than 1-2% over the next 12 months. If it gets to 25%, I think even AMD would consider that a colossally huge victory.

Put simply, as much as I personally love the new Radeon GPUs, I still think it’s going to take a very long time before long-term Nvidia owners truly begin considering them as a ‘viable’ and/or ‘better’ alternative.

Predictions #5 – Apple Will Discontinue the iPod

I must admit that I’m not an overly huge fan of Apple technology. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen their latest iPhones in action, and particularly in terms of the camera quality, they are absolutely amazing. With the further development of their smartphone technology, however, it’s been pretty evident over the last few years that Apple has started to concentrate less on other areas of its development. And chief among them is undoubtedly the iPod.

Put simply, owning an iPod now is somewhat of a redundant piece of technology. Particularly since many people now choose to stream their music through services such as ‘Spotify’ rather than ‘downloading’ music. Given that Apple last updated the iPod design back in mid-2019, I suspect that at some point this year, probably quietly, Apple will finally discontinue the product range as a whole!

Will any of you actually care though? – I doubt it.

Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – What Do You Think?

Well, there you have it, my 5 predictions for 2021, but what do you think? – Do you think I’m going to be proven to be mostly right or mostly wrong? Have I gone a bit mad on a few of them? – Let us know what you think in the comments!

If you enjoyed Mikes Rant, you can check out more via the link here – Alternatively, for more of his Christmas-related rantiness, check out the link here! They’ll be a new rant (nearly) every day between Christmas and New Year!