So, let’s continue with those predictions I started yesterday.

Prediction 3 - Bluetooth Unleashed

I’ve been pointing out for the last three years that Bluetooth filesharing is rampant on phones, particularly among kids. Late last year, we got some “official” evidence to that effect, with a claimed 29% of young kids sharing content through the back door. I’d say it was even higher among their older brethren.

Of course, this is fabulous news if you’re a filesharer or your business propagates Mugcon (Mobile User Generated Content). Probably not what you want to hear if you’re trying to sell content for mobile - though as Carlo is always keen to point out, a file shared doesn’t necessarily mean lost revenue, as most would probably never have been purchased anyway.

So my prediction is that DRM is suddenly moved up the agenda in 2007, which will be completely pointless as DRM never works anyway. After all, it doesn’t need everyone to be able to hack a file, just one person, who then passes the unlocked version into the public domain. And to a certain sort of person, an unhacked DRM system is a bigger challenge that Everest was to Sir Edmund Hillary’s generation - someone, sooner or later was going to come along and knock “the bastard off” as he put it, so pithily.

Which in turn will mean that ad-funded content will be one of the big trends on 2007, as content providers turn to a model better suited to the times.

Prediction 4 - Podcasting on Mobile

Despite the billions being poured into mobile TV and video, I’ve long argued that actually audio is a much more natural marriage with the mobile phone. Try walking along watching TV on your mobile and you’ll see what I mean.

That’s not to say that I’m dismissing video and TV, just pointing out the potential boom in audio and in this case, Podcasting.

I was listening to Jason Calacanis’s Podcast (which promises to be really good by the way) a few days back, where he riffed with Peter Rochas of Engadget and Dave Winer about the perfect Podcast player - because the iPod just isn’t. Characteristics would be that it could record as well as play, would be DRM free (as Podcasts are free), you could share them easily (I’m thinking Bluetooth - see above) and update over the air, or via wifi. Towards the end of the session, they realised that what they were describing sounds an awful lot like a mobile phone.

Jason and the boys were still talking about making this player - which on the one hand sounds like a great idea - but I’d suggest that this would live far better (and make it much more easily realised) as a mobile phone application. It might have to run on high end phones initially, but without being an expert on these matters, I’m pretty sure some clever person hack an application together for a Nokia E61 or similar and if so, I’ll be your first customer.

Your second, third, fourth etc customers would be cheaply obtained via AdMob (sorry for the plug, but it would just work better than any other medium for this product) where you can target my make, model and phone platform and capability. Then, once you’ve proven your case, you take it to the phone people and licence it.

So what is my prediction here? I think, by the end of 2007, many people will be using their phone as their primary Podcast consumption device. How we’ll measure this, I don’t know, but I’ll worry about that when I review my predictions at year end.

Ultimately, I’m sticking to my guns and saying that the mobile will kill (well, seriously maim anyway) the stand-alone MP3 player and I’m guessing that we’ll start to see a market decline in 2007 already happening.