There’s talk of bubbles. Of bubbles bursting.

But I feel like we’re in an innovation lull. The dominant themes of the last five years or so have matured and I don’t see an obvious successor for the next few years.

Mobile

Let’s note immediately that I am talking about the developed world here. Smartphones have been heavily adopted, but are still underutilised. By that I mean that most people now have them, but many people are not actually employing smart capabilites. I’d argue that this is partly because many people don’t need those capabilities - they want to use Facebook, send messages, listen to music, take pictures, look at maps and perhaps play the odd casual game. All these are done and done - available on all the brands and virtually perfected on Android and iOS.

It’s what we haven’t seen that alarms me. Mobile games are still casual puzzlers, $0.99 originals or $4.99 ports of existing franchises. Where are the immersive games? The new franchises? So far launching 2D birds across the screen is the best that’s been achieved - in FIVE YEARS.

And on the hardware side, I don’t expect much. A bigger screen, a thinner phone, longer battery life. Dull dull dull. I sat eating my lunch outside an Apple reseller yesterday - the poster in the window said ‘The new iPhone 4S - Dual Core A5 processor, 8M pixel camera’. Well if the best hook it has is some processor gobbledegook then we’re close to flattening out on innovation. I don’t expect the iPhone 5 to be game-changing in any respect.

Social

Facebook’s won for now. Twitter is plodding along. While both have performed phenomenally in terms of user adoption, neither is delivering the sort of financial returns that the markets want. But more worryingly, there’s nothing exciting coming from them. FB apps, credits and the open graph are moderately successful, but again, they are iterations rather than revolutions. The idea of people taking their social network with them across websites has failed to bear fruit - we just aren’t sharing enough.

Cloud

This one has a bit of distance to go. Dropbox has pushed the concept of cloud into the consumer mainstream - and monetized it. Google Docs is increasingly being adopted - despite Google’s lack of any innovation on that product for years. Chrome OS has gone nowhere. The concept of thin-clients hasn’t really worked out.

What's next?

I think mobile and social are complete and fully adopted. Cloud has a good foundation and is now ticking up in terms of usage.

The living room - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it once again… There is a MASSIVE market for a device that bridges a TV, console and media centre. Ouya has proven there’s still the demand for gaming in the living room. Visitors are still blown away by a simple XBMC setup at my house. “Where can we buy that?” they ask, reaching for their wallets. “You can’t, unless you’re a jailbreaking, command-lining fucking ubergimp.”

I’m not sure what else. Education and publishing seem fairly ripe for the pot. And I think Google can be challenged on an enormous number of fronts - I don’t know what the fuck they are doing, but Gmail, Docs, Maps, Local Business - all completely static for multiple years.