10 Tech Trends to Look For in 2006

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Dec. 22 at 7:20 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

This was an eventful year in technology, and I believe 2006 will bring more big news. Outsourcing and music phones should explode (Apple could make a foray into this field), and Lucent could implode. Dell could embrace AMD, and video games should be the next big thing.

Merger mania: In the late 1990s, merger activity was generally driven by the urge to build empires (and of course some of that good old synergy stuff). But these days, most big tech companies simply aren't growing very quickly -- to me, that means we'll see an awful lot of M&A activity.

Large companies such as IBM (IBM Quote), Cisco (CSCO Quote) and Oracle(ORCL Quote) will make a lot of deals, and that means a lot of big fat fees for Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS Quote). ...