Yep, it’s that time of year where we look back at the trends of the year and then look forward to what we think the next year has in store. We know these lists have become a bit cliche by now, but they really do enable us to reflect on the big picture.

So, here we go. The top 10 trends in greentech in 2011:

1). Solar prices plummet: One of the most overwhelming market drivers of 2011 was the massive price drop of solar modules. Researchers have found that the price of solar dropped by 40 percent in 2011. Part of that had to do with Chinese solar manufacturers flooding the market with low cost solar, creating an oversupply and benefiting from low cost loans from the Chinese government.

The result of these rock bottom prices has produced several things: 1). solar module makers are selling solar for below prices they can afford and that has led to bankruptcies for many solar companies; 2). super low cost solar will just help the proliferation of solar panels for consumers as it has become even more economical; 3). solar panels are now substantially cheaper than solar thermal in many cases and some solar developers that previously were focused on solar thermal have decided to use solar panels instead.

2). India set to become cleantech power house: When you think of developing countries and cleantech, you think of China. But India is creating a major market through its solar initiatives, smart grid plans and water infrastructure buildout. A large part of the 1.2 billion population is moving into the middle class and that means they will want more energy, more clean water and more quality food. It’s one of the few markets where cleantech will be able to grow without major subsidies.

3). Biofuel companies push for IPOs., aftermath varies: The bulk of the IPOs from greentech companies in the U.S., came from biofuel firms with little revenues, no profits, and often times no commercial product. Amyris hit the public markets at the end of 2010, Gevo went public in February, Solazyme in March, and KiOR in June. Companies that have filed but haven’t actually gone public include Coskata (filed in December), Mascoma (filed in September) and Fulcrum BioEnergy (in September). Most of these stocks have faltered in recent months — will the ones waiting in the wings have a good response if they go public in 2012?

4). Batteries still suck: Batteries are still the pain point for electric cars and power for computing technology. While information technology is still moving at a lighting pace, thanks to Moore’s law, battery tech hasn’t progressed any close to IT. That doesn’t mean startups and researchers aren’t trying it’s just taking an awfully long time. Will 2012 show any surprising improvement?

5). Solar CIGS players held on: Despite the high profile bankruptcy of Solyndra and the difficult economics of the solar market, many of the thin film solar companies using the material CIGS are still holding on for dear life. HelioVolt and Stion found backers in Korea, Nanosolar is still around, and Miasole has changed its management team but is still pushing forward. However, we’d predict that some of these players will start to struggle even more in 2012.

6). Slow going for electric vehicles: GM’s Volt didn’t hit its sales goals for 2011 of 10,000 cars sold, particularly due to production issues. Nissan’s LEAF sold around 20,000 globally in 2011. And these were the largest EV sellers in 2011. Even worse, some electric car companies struggled and bowed out of the difficult market including Think and Aptera.

We’ll see if GM and Nissan can get their numbers up significantly in 2012, while startups Fisker and Coda have a lot to prove next year. Meanwhile Tesla will be launching its Model S sedan, so all eyes will be on Tesla as it continues to pioneer the independent EV market.

7). Waiting for IPOs: Despite a couple of biofuel IPOs, the IPO market for most of greentech remained shut throughout 2011. Companies that had been planning for months, if not years, to go public in 2011 were forced to find other options. Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks raised private financing even though it filed an S1 earlier this year, and eMeter opted for an acquisition to Siemens, instead of a long contemplated IPO.

8). Year of large solar power developers: While 2011 will be remembered as a troubling year for solar manufacturers, it also is a year when major U.S. power companies took a plunge into investing and owning a lot more solar power plants. Cheap solar panels mean solar developers are even more ready to buy them up and install them in sunny areas of the U.S. and a variety of state mandates are requiring more solar farms for utilities.

9). The politicization of clean energy and green jobs: Unfortunately Solyndra was the biggest — and the longest running by far — news story in greentech in 2011. That’s because the bankruptcy of the company and the lost DOE loan turned into a political talking point for house republicans. Expect more Solyndra sprinklings all the way up until the election in 2012.

10). The cleanweb is here: In early 2011, when cleantech exits were scarce and funding had dropped, many investors and startups were turning to the cleanweb, or essentially using mobile and web to manage resource constraint, from energy to water to food. These technologies, investors are hoping, will offer better returns similar to Internet companies. They are also much more capital efficient than large scale clean energy projects.

Image courtesy of Rob Boudon.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
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The fact that we all have technology at our fingertips has caused a disintermediation within traditional commerce, and significant disruption for retailers big and small. Consider the impact of Netflix on Blockbuster and local video stores, or how Amazon upended book buying. What we know for sure is that innovation, and the speed at which a business is able to innovate, is no longer an option. Rather, it is paramount to survival.

In the next decade, we’ll see more change in the commerce landscape than in the past 100 years combined.The reason? Four mega trends being driven by consumers are dramatically changing buying and selling habits as we know them. Merchants of all types—from brick-and-mortar retail outlets to non-profits, to manufacturers and even those selling online, need to ensure they’re keeping pace or risk going the way of Blockbuster, Borders and the dinosaurs.

Mobile

Smartphone sales are on such an aggressive upward trajectory that some estimates suggest there will be up to 50 billion connected devices (beyond just smartphones) by 2020 and each consumer will have approximately seven devices connected to the Internet. Beyond just making phone calls or sending text messages, people regularly look up directions, research products while in-store, chat and compare with friends and family, search for deals and even pay for their morning coffee with their mobile phone.

These intelligent, always-connected devices and the consumers using them to their full potential are pushing merchants to react quickly, or die. Businesses that don’t have a mobile commerce strategy are losing out on significant revenue, and that’s only going to continue to accelerate.

Local

Not long ago the most impressive features of online shopping were the ability to find out which stores were located in your neighborhood and determine which might have your item in.

Now, there’s an app for that!  By leveraging inventory sharing and local mapping, buyers can now access real-time inventory data while on the go, browse through sales and deals tailored to their individual preferences and even get suggestions based on things like frequently visited restaurants, clubs, hotels and more. This is powerful stuff.

The merging of mobile and local is also leading to the creation of entirely new business models and opportunities for merchants and consumers alike. A great example is that people are now able to get paid for snapping photos while out and about in their cities. How cool is that?

If you’re not taking full advantage of the ability to reach customers based on stated preferences and proximity, you’ve already fallen behind.

Social

Commerce is an inherently social endeavor. Not long ago, a customer would try on a sweater while in-store and ask her friends for feedback before purchasing. Today that same customer can just as easily try on the sweater, snap a photo of herself wearing it, share it on her social network of choice and get a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ within minutes from multiple friends in various locations. There are apps that will share what a person’s friends have purchased on social sites or allow users to share local recommendations with one another.

The explosion of consumer interest in social networks has spawned the so-called social commerce opportunity. In fact, transacting within social networks is predicted to go from a billion opportunity in 2011 to a billion opportunity by 2015.

The challenge for merchants? How to effectively leverage a customers’ social graph to build an additional commerce channel within the social networks themselves. We’re beginning to see early signs of this with some of the group gifting apps and the ‘social shopping mall’ concept that allows sellers to offer their products directly to hundreds of millions of Facebook users.

Digital

Digital has changed everything—including how we use and think about currency. People now have the ability to bump phones together to pay off a friendly wager, order and pay for a meal entirely via a mobile device and transfer paper checks into their account by snapping a photo with their mobile phone.

Similar changes are occurring in-store. Consumers can pick up an item off the shelf, scan the barcode using their mobile phone and immediately find out if the same item is available online or down the street for a lower price.

The digital revolution is here, it’s real and it has leveled the playing field for both buyers and sellers of all shapes and sizes.

The Future

As the mobile, local, social and digital trends drive our lifestyles, the pace of innovation will determine which businesses will go boom or bust. At the end of the day, merchants want to return to the business of being merchants. They want to find the best things to sell to consumers and they want to create the best shopping experience a consumer can have. Those that are nimble and seek to adapt quickly to emerging consumer behaviors will not only survive, but thrive. One thing is for sure—the future will look nothing like the past.

What do you think commerce will look like in 5-10 years?

Matthew Mengerink is vice president and general manager of X.commerce, the first end-to-end, multi-channel commerce technology platform designed for all the ways consumers choose to shop today. Matthew leads the integrated open commerce platform group and is responsible for ensuring that eBay Inc. builds a strong, robust developer community across the eBay, PayPal and GSI technology platforms to amplify merchants’ businesses.

To hear more about mobile payments, check out our GigaOM Mobilize conference Sept. 26 and 27 in San Francisco.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Johan Larsson.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities
• NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bang
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

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Next week, the mobile-obsessed hordes will descend on Barcelona for the hottest tech show on Earth: the Mobile World Congress (if you thought it was the Consumer Electronics Show you’re living in the early aughts, my friend). For those, like me, who are staying behind and are worried about being overwhelmed, here are the five themes worth paying attention to during the four days of the show. Don’t worry; if we missed one, we’ll let you know as soon as we see it.

Mobile Networks Meet the Cloud. All the big gear makers from Alcatel-Lucent to Nokia Siemens Networks will have something to show mobile operators that will allow them to deploy smaller base stations and more flexible networks. Big vendors and startups are all trying to help operators deal with a deluge of traffic and the need for more network components, from Wi-Fi access points to pico and femtocells. As operators support more networks and deploy more base stations, they’ll need more software to manage and adjust them without the aid of costly network engineers. Expect startups pitching self-optimizing networks, real-time traffic information, technology to manage interference and other products that will help operators automate their networks to appear in droves.

Dual-Core is the Only Core. Just this week, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Texas Instruments all announced new application processors that take the idea of a single-core, 1-GHz smartphone chip and double (or in the case of TI’s planned OMAP 5 product, quadruple) it. We’ve been excited about dual-core chips for years, but they are just now hitting the market in consumer phones and tablets. Look for demonstrations of the chips, and also for the new types of devices and applications they can power. Given that most people are toting smartphones with single cores today, you might also be looking to replace your existing phone. It’s going to look pretty slow after Barcelona’s demonstrations.

The Overwhelming Onslaught of Video. A huge component of mobile traffic will be video as consumers download YouTube  videos, chat with friends via FaceTime or merely play precious moments from their Facebook pages on their handsets. Allot Communications recently said streaming video comprises 37 percent of network traffic today and Cisco said it would be 66 percent of traffic by 2015. Part of the issue is more people turning to video on their handsets, but the other component is a rise in tablets which makes watching video so much better while on the go. Vendors such as Bytemobile will show off new gear to help operators optimize video on their networks and reduce costs, while startups such as Skype and Facebook might introduce new products that only exacerbate the problem.

Tune in to See if Microsoft Gets Mobile. After Nokia turned to Microsoft today to save its “burning platform,” the software giant has a chance to team up with a great handset maker to give its Windows Phone 7 operating system a draw. Some reviewers actually liked Windows Phone 7 when it launched last year, but when it hit the market, the response from consumers was decidedly less enthusiastic. And while operators might long for alternatives to the Android/Apple juggernauts, it’s unclear if Microsoft and Nokia will convince operators, developers and consumers that the combined platforms are a good option. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, will give a keynote at Mobile World Congress, and observers will also be looking for hot apps and good devices that buy into the Redmond ecosystem. Also pay attention to see if Microsoft’s decision to port its Windows franchise to the ARM architecture generates any exciting tablet or even laptop news.

Everyone Hops on the Mobile Payments Bandwagon … Again. Mobile payments have been a favorite topic in the industry for years, but this year may prove to be a turning point as more players jump on to Near Field Communications, direct carrier billing and other payment options. Mobile World Congress has dedicated a conference track to mobile money, with an assortment of carrier, financial institutions, payment providers and start-ups all scheduled to talk about the industry. While Square’s Jack Dorsey is a scheduled keynote speaker, it appears much of the talk will revolve around NFC deployments, trials and updates. Google’s outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt is scheduled to keynote and will likely talk about Android’s support for NFC among other things. But expect a lot of other news from other players looking to finally make some money off mobile payments.

Additional reporting by Ryan Kim.

Image courtesy of Flickr user andy_c

Related GigaOM Pro Content (subscription required):

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Read more on KCEN-TV Temple

Copyright (c) 2008 Mervyn Rees

Cars are status symbols – there’s no getting away from it. People keep on saying about them being a means of getting from A to B but very few of us want to drive around in a car we don’t feel proud of.

While most of us want a car that’s on the “A” list, that doesn’t mean we necessarily want a car that looks just like everybody else’s. It’s a matter of combining accepted style with individual creativity.

That’s where gadgets come ‘into-their-own’. With so many of them on the market, we can pick and choose to our heart’s delight, and “design” a car that’ll reflect individual personality and style.

Exterior

Have you ever watched a stranger walk over to a parked car and give it the onceor even twiceover?

What is that makes the stranger choose that particular car to look at rather than the one in front or behind it, even though they may be the same make and model? Yes, it’s the way the exterior has been personalized.

Exterior car accessories are now a days running the gamut, from traditional chrome trim to exotic custom paint jobs, neon lighting trim and the ever-popular personalized license plates.

The most obvious exterior characteristic is the vehicle’s styling. For some time now, manufacturers have been streamlining their vehicles to reflect more attention to aerodynamics, as well as enhancing the fuel efficiency of their products. The end result is a sleek, lithe (dare one say sexy?) and highly attractive car.

Next is the endless variety of paint jobs now available. Why settle for factory green when you can mix a personalized colour you can name after yourself? For the truly conceited, you might even throw your own face on the bonnet/hood! Warning – this may elicit more laughs than accolades.

The availability of custom body garages that will do virtually anything you want to personalize your car has become nearly as commonplace as any regular mechanic. The sky literally seems the limit on what can be accomplished with some imagination and the corresponding access to seemingly limitless funds.

Interior

Once the exterior of a car has been accepted as cool, that same stranger that admired the exterior will bend down and take a look through the window. What’s it like inside?

If all he sees is dull grey seat covers, run-of-the-mill floor mats, and a standard steering wheel, he’s unlikely to be impressed.

If you want a car that looks good, the interior has to match the exterior.

Trends that are popular right now include the use of: Non-traditional materials such as real wood or aluminium, or perhaps traditional materials used in non-traditional ways (custom moulding and trim).

Mood lighting and the use of vibrant colours such as neon lime and orange are also popular.

Custom upholstery, faux animal prints, leather or even suede.

Electronic accessories like stereo and speaker systems, DVD or mp3 players, video games and security systems, give a car a degree of individuality that others will enjoy too.

The most popular accessory is currently chrome. Once confined to the exterior as merely trim, it’s now being used extensively as interior ornamentation for those who want to be seen as the baddest dog on the block. Word to ‘Yo Momma’!

Copyright (c) 2008 Mervyn Rees

Cars are status symbols – there’s no getting away from it. People keep on saying about them being a means of getting from A to B but very few of us want to drive around in a car we don’t feel proud of.

While most of us want a car that’s on the “A” list, that doesn’t mean we necessarily want a car that looks just like everybody else’s. It’s a matter of combining accepted style with individual creativity.

That’s where gadgets come ‘into-their-own’. With so many of them on the market, we can pick and choose to our heart’s delight, and “design” a car that’ll reflect individual personality and style.

Exterior

Have you ever watched a stranger walk over to a parked car and give it the onceor even twiceover?

What is that makes the stranger choose that particular car to look at rather than the one in front or behind it, even though they may be the same make and model? Yes, it’s the way the exterior has been personalized.

Exterior car accessories are now a days running the gamut, from traditional chrome trim to exotic custom paint jobs, neon lighting trim and the ever-popular personalized license plates.

The most obvious exterior characteristic is the vehicle’s styling. For some time now, manufacturers have been streamlining their vehicles to reflect more attention to aerodynamics, as well as enhancing the fuel efficiency of their products. The end result is a sleek, lithe (dare one say sexy?) and highly attractive car.

Next is the endless variety of paint jobs now available. Why settle for factory green when you can mix a personalized colour you can name after yourself? For the truly conceited, you might even throw your own face on the bonnet/hood! Warning – this may elicit more laughs than accolades.

The availability of custom body garages that will do virtually anything you want to personalize your car has become nearly as commonplace as any regular mechanic. The sky literally seems the limit on what can be accomplished with some imagination and the corresponding access to seemingly limitless funds.

Interior

Once the exterior of a car has been accepted as cool, that same stranger that admired the exterior will bend down and take a look through the window. What’s it like inside?

If all he sees is dull grey seat covers, run-of-the-mill floor mats, and a standard steering wheel, he’s unlikely to be impressed.

If you want a car that looks good, the interior has to match the exterior.

Trends that are popular right now include the use of: Non-traditional materials such as real wood or aluminium, or perhaps traditional materials used in non-traditional ways (custom moulding and trim).

Mood lighting and the use of vibrant colours such as neon lime and orange are also popular.

Custom upholstery, faux animal prints, leather or even suede.

Electronic accessories like stereo and speaker systems, DVD or mp3 players, video games and security systems, give a car a degree of individuality that others will enjoy too.

The most popular accessory is currently chrome. Once confined to the exterior as merely trim, it’s now being used extensively as interior ornamentation for those who want to be seen as the baddest dog on the block. Word to ‘Yo Momma’!