There's fairly universal agreement that this is likely to be the year of the cloud, the mobile, Africa's emergence as a new economic region and - as has happened for the past two years - the year of the tablet. Oh, and the apps economy, too.

Intel would like it to be the year of the ultrabook, a new fancy name for smaller, thinner laptops. But bet on the cloud taking the lead.

Though its storage and processing are internet-based, the "cloud" does sound so much better, doesn't it? It has been around for years, all the ingredients are finally and cohesively in place, especially in broadband-starved South Africa.

Fast wireless broadband and increasingly powerful devices, especially smart phones, are getting cheaper.

Cloud-based storage is a significant leap, even though we have been emerging ourselves in it slowly - much like inching into those cold Atlantic seas as the Vaalies do in Cape Town in December.

South Africans will adopt this trend, too, as soon as broadband access gets (even) cheaper, especially with the arrival of new undersea cables within the next 18 months.

Who cares what device you have? You just want your e-mail. And data. And Twitter, obviously.

Smartphones, which outsold PCs for the first time last year, will get cheaper and more powerful. But the battery life won't get any better. Sorry.

On the devices side, this will be Android's year, by force of numbers. Google says there were 700000 daily activations of its smartphone operating system in December.

Apple, with its single annual upgrading of a single model - which still captures two-thirds of the smartphone market's profits - continues to hold the high ground with the iPhone 4S. Its voice assistant Siri represents a bold step towards the much better-suited voice input into a cellphone with its limited keyboard. Google Voice Search, which is being run by a South African, is also developing well.

Nokia, still the largest seller of cellphones, and Microsoft, still unable to reproduce its desktop computer dominance in the mobile space, will be hoping that their unexpected alliance bears fruit with the Lumia Windows Phone.

Microsoft's Windows 8 is due out this year, integrating desktop and tablet operating systems and representing the biggest push from the world's biggest software maker into the new cloud-based world.

Samsung, fresh from selling 300million phones for the first time last year, will aim to take Nokia's pole position in cellphones.

Research in Motion (RIM), whose BlackBerry phones are booming in emerging markets but plummeting in developed ones, faces a bleak year.

Last year revenue declined by 70% and the share price by 76%, putting the maker of the original e-mail cellphone in dire straits.

Expect something significant in the next few months, not ruling out a buyout.

We have not seen what comes out of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The largest tech show in the world is often a harbinger to new technologies.

But Apple will continue to flourish in the tablet segment it created and still dominates. And yes, there is always "another one coming".

The iPad3 is expected to be launched in March.

This year is expected to be the year near-field communication takes off. NFC is a cashless payment system already widely used in access cards for trains and undergrounds, including the Gautrain. Now it is in new smartphones and various pilot projects are running in South Africa.

Mobile wallets will become more bountiful, and cashless trials are running across South Africa. Mobile payments are set to surge, especially in Africa, where Kenya's M-Pesa is the gold standard but has not translated its success in South Africa just yet.

Watch MXit, the free messaging platform bought last year by World of Avatar. I6t is being revamped and rewritten. Its 20-million users and its potential are still under-valued.

So, writing this on my iPhone in the Karoo, with the barest of cellphone signals, this is the year of the cloud, of mobile, of Africa rising.

• Shapshak is the editor of Stuff magazine