SFR is an amazing observation platform of the digital world with over 20 million mobile customers and 4 million ADSL households, about half of which actively use IPTV which may well rank us in the top ISP worldwide in this field. We read carefully and regularly people like Mary Meeker, idate, Rww, techcrunch, techmeme, gizmodo, digg, presse-citron, GigaOm, Wired and many others and thought it would be a nice time to share our own views on a few trends of our industry. Meeting a few hundred start-ups from a dozen of countries every year, we hope that this contribution helps and we are happy to interact about it.

1 - Social Media will strongly expand. Brands are getting into a maturity phase towards communities and there is a lot of space for start-ups (as our venture AF83, or others as Stribe ) to make it happen. Mobile is going to have a central role is this next stage. We see Facebook as a long term player of this game. Facebook connect and Facebook Apps are becoming "must have" of the whole ecosystem. Twitter will grow and monetize but we see it as much smaller as long as there is no easy way to avoid that most user remain inactive. More competition will probably surge.

2 - Regarding smartphones, we think that their continuous expansion is the key driver of mobile internet fast growth. We do not see a change in the hierarchy of OS, though Android will catch-up almost if they can handle handset fragmentation. There is a lot of space for start-ups (as our venture Prylos) in this space, as long as their business model is not only to sell applications (Application Stores monetization is still a challenge)

3 - As a consequence, Mobile marketing is booming. Many players as Admob will benefit from this, for instance our ventures Backelite and Sofialys. Corporations will become increasingly good at using the mobile as a marketing tool and there is a lot of space for innovation in order to help them to do so.

4 - Search will still be an important topic of fast innovation, and we like very much Google Googles, Wolfram, or Bing. It is an important landmark of our industry since many players spend more time on Search Engine Optimization than on Design.

5 - Organizing the very rich information of our digital world is a key issue and will remain so. Many players as our venture webwag, or new comers as silentale, peartrees will help to make it happen. There is also a space for more innovation in design, even though the long expected web in 3 dimensions will probably not start in 2010.

6 - Crowd sourcing is also getting interesting for VCs. Wengo and Eyeka are excellent exemples of succesful monetization. We also like initiatives as peopleforcinema and Hypios. See our film on this.

7 - IPTV will really expand. Players of this field as our venture Wiztivi or Fair-Play benefit from a strong wind blowing from behind. Catch up TV and VOD will expand, as contents become interactive. There are interesting initiatives around 3D TV too.

8 - Networks optimization is becoming key as a consequence of exponential growth of traffic both on mobile and fix. We do not know anyone against the neutrality of networks but there is some space for more solutions to face this growth. Technologies as our ventures Assia and Nomotech will certainly help as well as other real innovations aiming to promote and ensure a sustainable and rational use of the internet, especially wireless.

9 - Digital security is a space of innovation. As our digital world becomes more and more complex, its safety is key and always more complex to achieve. Our nice exit of 2009, Trusted Logic, is an example.

10 - Augmented reality is amazing ( Layar, Sky Maps, Tonchidot...), like location based services, but it will take time to find a business model in itself: it is just going to be everywhere.

11 - Music seems to be at a tipping point. There are success stories in this space apart from lala.com. Our very succesful ventures in concert ticketing Digitick and derivatives La Boutique Officielle are other exemples.

12 - Connected objects and broadly speaking connected homes are going to be an important field of development. Iphone accessories will be expanding, Ebook will be hot. If Apple issues a tablet with a nice user interface and the possibility to develop interesting applications, it may well be another gold rush. Smaller players as our ventures M2M Solution and Supertec have good market opportunities.

13 - We believe that 2010 is going to be turning year in long expected fields as Mobile payment and e-health (with our venture H2AD)

14 - Cleantech will be a field of strong innovation in 2010, fastly converging with IT

Farewell years 2000, welcome years 2010, they are going to be incredibly exciting.

Season's greetings to all our readers