Predictions are a mug’s game. So this mug has volunteered to write up some 2025 consumer tech and gadget predictions for Stuff. I’ve racked my brains to figure out what will happen with the likes of AI, streaming and folding phones. And I’m sure you can take everything here as 100% accurate for what will happen over the coming 12 months – give or take 100%. After all, this is science*!
* This is not actually science – Legal ed.
The AI bubble will spectacularly burst
AI surfs a colossal wave of hype but is set to be eaten by the shark of reality. That’s not to say there won’t be amazing use cases – for example, in healthcare. But for consumers, there will be an increasing feeling AI is rubbish. Expect upheaval. Costs will spiral. And standalone AI devices will be toast, because phones will do everything they can – and if you use AI on a phone, you can at least double-check in a browser whether what’s being spat out is true or a hallucination.
Streaming will continue its fragmentation farce
Music showed how streaming could work. Sign up for a service. Access all of music. (Ish.) Lovely. Only not if you’re the people who own the IP, because then you don’t make as much money as you might. And TV is insanely expensive to produce. Hence 2025 will give us another season of Streaming Companies Take Their Balls Home, forcing you to sign up to yet more services to watch top shows. Prices will go up. Ad tiers will cost the same as non-ad tiers did two years ago. The worst thing: we’ll all lap it up and keep subscribing.
Headsets won’t become your only device
A future where we all wear glasses that overlay a digital world on top of the real one? Thrillingly futuristic or chillingly dystopian, depending on your viewpoint. Either way, this won’t arrive in 2025, despite pundits desperately claiming the next headset revolution is imminent. The tech will advance but smart glasses won’t replace your phone in 2025. Which is just as well. It’s depressing enough seeing a train full of people prodding at glass screens. But it would be infuriating existing in a carriage of commuters wildly gesticulating at digital objects in mid-air.
Apple will continue being Apple
People expect too much of Apple, as if it’s going to unveil an iPod or an iPhone on a weekly basis. The reality is big surprises from the company are infrequent. Expect a year of iteration with Apple being Apple. New low-end mobile devices will be powerful and relatively affordable, yet retain disappointing key features, such as the iPad’s screen doubling as a mirror. Still, perhaps Apple can use that to look at itself rather than getting angry whenever the EU pushes back against Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour.
Folding phones won’t defeat physics
If you want a phone that folds in half, have at it. But don’t expect 2025 to usher in one with any more chance of long-term survival than, say, a Ming vase being hurled at a wall. Or one where the fold disappears, rather than leaving an irritating crease. It’s unlikely we’ll get a new folding Apple device either (2026, apparently), but there’s a slim chance an Android wag will one-up Huawei’s latest foldable with a quad-folding phone. Me, I’m waiting for one you can screw up into a ball and lob at someone’s head to get their attention when they won’t get off their own phone.