In the first 4 blog postings of January, I’ll review trends and offer predictions – or, to be more honest – guesses, as to what will happen in the coming year. Please don’t invest money.

Let’s begin with Apple…

I am by no means the only individual who dropped the Microsoft PC in favour of Apple last year. Well over a million people did in the US alone – some prompted by the simple fact that iTunes works so much better if you have an Apple. Some may have been drawn by the fact (as Apple users will attest) that the Mac does not suffer from PC entropy – you know what I mean, after a while that PC simply doesn’t seem to work well any more and nothing you do makes much difference (a typical consumer experience – usually caused by a host of ills from spyware to disk saturation).

Apple continues to make the running in the consumer PC market, deriving its success, to some extent, from the iPod. The latest video iPod has prompted yet another Apple-driven phenomenon. A video download market that works – millions of music videos have already been downloaded and a new market has been established for TV programmes.

It is no small achievement, given that so many different companies have tried to set the video market in motion. What Apple did that made a difference was to deliver every piece of the service (the alliances with content providers, the web site, the software, the desktop hardware and the personal device). I doubt whether dominating the market for video is going to be as easy as dominating the market for music, but I expect Apple to do it anyway. Only Sony has the ability to challenge Apple right now – but it doesn’t have the creativity.

Apple’s latest quarterly figures ($3.68 billion reported in October) suggest a current run rate of about $15 billion p.a. With revenue growth in the region of 68 percent, we may be looking at $25 billion revenues this time next year.

I cannot see anything slowing Apple’s growth in the near term. Indeed Apple is probably about to increase the pace a little more. MacWorld occurs this month and Steve Jobs probably has a few surprise products to launch – including the first fruits of his Intel partnership. I imagine that both Sony and Microsoft are more than a little concerned at Apple’s momentum.