2010 - the year of 3D

Experts claim that 2010 will be the year that 3D becomes widely available on notebook computers, reports Earth Times.

Stefan Hollaender, Sony marketing director, says convergence will be a major trend this year with the release of Blu-ray laptops that can play high-definition movies on TV screens.

Acer will roll out its Acer Aspire 5740D this year; which has a special coating on its 15.6-inch screen that enables users wearing polarised glasses to see in 3D when they play movies.

Google Android and Apple's iPhone operating system took the top spots as being the fastest-growing smartphone platforms in 2009, says IT World Canada.

Apple sold 24.9 million iPhones in 2009, compared to 11.4 million in 2008, taking its share of the market to 14.4%.

Roberta Cozza, Gartner principal research analyst, says Microsoft's smartphone market share fell from 11.8% to 8.7% and overall sales dropped by about 1.5 million phones.

The cloud-based mobile applications market is set to grow 88% from 2009 to 2014 and will reach $9.5 billion, states Read Write Web.

Juniper Research says the adoption of the new Web standard HTML5, increasing mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise is driving this growth.

Juniper claims the processing power of the cloud is key to the future of mobile as the applications are not limited to the mobile device's storage and processing power.