A lot of experts in the world of technology have been making predictions as to what 2012 has in store for the technological world. Some of the predictions that have been made so far include, the decline of single – band routers and the Kindle Fire coming to the UK. We will have to wait and see if they are right. We have decided to give you a rundown of the predictions we think could have the highest chance of happening this year.

2012 could be the year that YouView is released in the UK. YouView is an internet connected platform created by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 and will allow users to access television and radio stations through an internet connection.  It is rumoured that there will be in house trials at the beginning of April and if all trials are a success, then the boxes should be on sale before the start of the London Olympics.

Sticking with the television theme, there have been strong rumours that Apple are planning to release their own range of television sets in 2012, with the sets being called iTVs. There have been reports suggesting that Samsung have been producing chips for the television sets and that the TV displays, which will come in 32 and 37 inches are being produced by Sharp. Previous reports about the television sets have said that they could come with voice recognition built in, but there have been others that have said Apple won’t release their own tv sets but they may decide to build Apple TV functionality into new iMac Computers they make. So it is hard to say for certain what Apple will do, so we will have to wait until an announcement is made.

Our third prediction is that HTML 5 will become a big part in how websites are shaped in 2012. By using HTML when creating new websites, developers will be able to make browsers a lot more interactive. Sites like Facebook have already spent a considerable amount of time and money into making their sites HTML 5 ready. Other sites have already started to redesign their sites into HTML 5. So there could be a lot of web developers redesigning websites to make them HTML 5 friendly.

Between January and October 2011, there were 1.2 million tablets sold by companies including Samsung, HP and Motorola. Apple sold around 11 million tablets in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, which shows the hold that Apple have over the tablet market. The fourth prediction we are commenting on is that 2012 will see a reduction in the amount of companies releasing tablets, but the tablets that are released will be of a much higher standard than those that have been released before. There could be a threat to Apple’s hold over the tablet market in 2012 in the form of Microsoft. By releasing Windows 8 this year, Microsoft are looking to become much more competitive within the tablet market, Apple will have to update their existing software to make sure they stay ahead of all competition that could come their way, to stay the number one producers of tablets.

Finally on our list of predictions for 2012 is Facebook will become even more powerful and could end up being a necessity to navigate your way round the internet. There are sites such as Spotify who already require you to have a Facebook account to sign up to their site and this trend doesn’t look like slowing down or changing. A lot of sites already have the option to sign up with either a Facebook or Twitter account, they do give the option to sign up without a social network account but that option could slowly disappear, which will mean that those who do not have an account with either Facebook or Twitter can’t sign up to sites. Is this a good thing? We will have to wait and see what happens with this last prediction.

What do you think of the predictions we have summarised? Are there any you feel we could have added to the list? At the end of the year, we will have a post about how many of these (if any) came true and what we expect for 2013. Please leave any comments you may have on any of these predictions or any you may feel we left off.