Yankee Group unveiled its annual predictions, projecting that 2010 will be a year of rebuilding for the communications sector. While the economic crisis has permanently changed how consumers, enterprises and network builders approach connectivity, the report, "From Crisis Comes Opportunity: Yankee Group's 2010 Predictions" forecasts opportunities in key areas including cord cutting, devices, cloud computing and network innovation

The Yankee Group 2010 predictions are:

-- Cord-cutting will double yet again in 2010. Consumers will continue to drop land-line phone service in favor of mobile, and mobile broadband replacement will accelerate.

-- The bell tolls for device subsidies. Lower operator profits will prompt many new no-subsidy, no-contract plans from major network operators.

-- Netbooks fall from grace. While netbooks won the battle for consumers' hearts in 2009, they will ultimately lose the war, as notebooks will take on similar form factors and similar prices without such drastic compromises in processing power.

-- Consumers drive more than 50 percent of enterprise smartphone purchases. Rampant consumerization of IT continues with the majority of wireless devices used for business purposes being purchased by employees themselves.

-- Chrome OS powers a new class of Anywhere devices. Google's browser-based OS won't be a PC killer, but it will power a new range of must-have consumer devices.

-- Cloudy IT sparks demand for clear management tools. One in three businesses will invest in a new class of cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) tools to manage hybrid IT infrastructures of physical and virtual assets.

-- Upstart upsets the equipment vendor applecart. As LTE strategies are aggressively pursued in North America, Huawei will jump the Pacific and take an early lead as the predominant LTE equipment supplier.

-- Enterprise trust lifts telcos to the top of the cloud. Service outages from Amazon, Google and others made clear that many cloud services aren't yet up to par. Telcos will become trusted intermediaries between disparate cloud environments, offering service delivery, SLAs, federation, orchestration, security and more.

-- Network innovation well runs dry. The telecommunications industry has long tapped start-ups and IPOs for innovation, but with venture funding on the steep decline, vendors will awaken to the fact that the start-up pipeline is broken.

-- Telcos unite behind infrastructure sharing. Led by European trailblazers, sharing of both active and passive network assets will become the de facto business model for efficient telcos in both developed and emerging markets.

-- U.S. network neutrality rules have domino effect worldwide. Decisions from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will reverberate globally, and service providers will be forced to become more transparent about internal traffic management practices and their effects on end-users.

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A new IBM global survey of over 32,000 consumers reveals that technology is giving shoppers a new source of power -- pushing retailers to engage them more directly via increased use of personalized promotions and offerings.

The changing economy has given rise to the smarter consumer– one who uses technology to make more informed buying decisions, exchange information with peers, make purchases on-the-go and shop across multiple channels. At the same time, the increased use of technology has empowered consumers to become more vocal and demanding about their wants and needs. Not only are consumers becoming more demanding, but they are also more willing to help. 79 percent of respondents said they want to work with retailers to co-design new products and services that better meet their personal needs.

The study also revealed that while shoppers are showing increased demand for multiple technology channels, they want to use different technologies for different activities.

* 79 percent want to use websites to access and print coupons
* 75 percent want to use mobile phones to find out where the nearest store is located
* 66 percent want to see what goods are in stock before going into the store.

From the consumers’ eyes, the top areas of improvement for retailers were around delivering customized promotions and ensuring product availability. The good news is that 61 percent of respondents said they would spend more with a retailer if they got these two areas right.

While IBM’s analysis shows that consumers are increasingly ready to use technologies to interact both with retailers and with other consumers, this trend is even more pronounced in growth markets. Consumers in India, China and Brazil, are almost twice as willing to use multiple technologies for shopping and making purchases. This is primarily because the uptake of new technologies is often faster in emerging countries.

Recent IDC research on the intersection of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and collaboration shows that we are entering a time of significant cultural and process change for businesses, driven by the emergence of the social Web. According to a new IDC survey, 57% of U.S. workers use social media for business purposes at least once per week. Additional findings from IDC’s social business research include: