A LOT of new innovations made headlines last year including foldable phones, mega-zoom camera capability in smartphones, 5G, wearables, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0 and cyber security.
Moving forward into the new year and decade, we foresee the tech world will continue to prosper regardless of economic conditions.
Let’s take a look at what is in store this year.
Wearables: Like last year, smartwatches, sport bands and wireless earphones will continue to be popular consumer devices. Market Research Company Gartner has stated that the global end user spending on wearable devices will total US$52 billion this year. This is an increase of 27 per cent from 2019 where spending was US$41 billion.
More players are expected to release better wearables especially smartwatches.
Gartner predicts that competition from lower-cost smartwatches will reduce the average selling prices by 4.5 per cent in 2021.
End users will spend the most on wearables like smartwatches and smart clothing with spending growing 34 and 52 per cent respectively this year.
The company also says that smartwatches and ear-worn devices will take the lead in term of shipments with smartwatch shipments forecast to total 86 million units and ear-worn wearable shipments reaching 70 million units.
The ear-worn wearable market — led by Apple (AirPods), Samsung (Galaxy Buds), Xiaomi (AirDots) and Bose (SoundSport) and new entrant Amazon will remain competitive.
Pixel power: The smartphone market will continue to dominate the consumer technology scene but the focus will be on higher-resolution cameras with mega zoom.
Late last year, Xiaomi broke the record with its 108-megapixel Mi Note 10 smartphone.
This marks the beginning of an era of mega-resolution cameras in smartphones as other players are also expected to come up with such capability for their smartphones this year.
Besides that, more phones, especially the premium ones, are also expected to offer better telephoto capability with up to five times optical zoom and other capabilities such as slow motion, better bokeh rendering, higher resolution videos as well as slow motion capability.
The foldable trend that started last year, with phones such as the Samsung Galaxy
Fold, Huawei MateX and Motorola Razr 2019, is expected to continue. We expect more of such phones to come from Chinese smartphone players as they have been showing some really great innovation initiatives in smartphone technology over the past year.
Perhaps the Consumer Electronics Show 2020, which starts tomorrow in Las Vegas, US, will be the platform for companies to showcase their new smartphone innovations.
Streaming wars: Music and video streaming services will continue to flourish this year as more people, especially younger consumers, prefer on-demand entertainment platforms such as Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and YouTube.
Thanks to fast broadband Internet, better high-resolution screens on personal devices and smart TVs, consumers are turning to these services for entertainment.
According to market research company TechNavio, the music streaming service market size is expected to post a compound annual growth rate of over 16 per cent during the period 2019-2023.
This is the result of the improvement in Internet bandwidth and affordable subscription rates (about RM20 a month).
Deloitte’s Digital Media Trends Survey has found that consumers have an average of three streaming video services, a number that has remained steady for two years.
What makes music streaming successful is it does not have deejays, time checks or lengthy ads.
Listeners can choose from a number of categories having millions of tracks. The freedom to play from any kind of device also appeals to them.
For the global video streaming market, it is expected to reach US$688.7 billion by 2024, exhibiting a CAGR of 19.1 per cent from 2019 to 2024.
IoT era: An increasing number of IoT cameras, appliances and sensors are expected in 2020.
With its limitless applications, IoT is expected to connect 21 billion devices this year.
International Data Corporation estimates that by 2025, there will be over 41 billion connected devices generating 80 zettabytes of data.
From refrigerators to parking spaces to houses, the IoT brings more things into the digital fold every day.
In the future, cities will become smart, courtesy of data gained from IoT, enabling citizens to enjoy a hassle-free and much more comfortable life.
Thanks to IoT, cities will become more efficient, saving money, time and resources.
But with all the data collected, IoT security will be a bigger priority in the near future too.
Expect more robust IoT devices with improved security.
With machine learning, AI and big data techniques on the rise, risks will be reduced, enhancing data security and protection.
Fintech: The finance industry saw huge changes last year. It is clear that 5G will open the door to exciting cross-industry collaborations.
This year, expect changes in business models, more disruptive innovations and wide opportunity for monetisation.
Grocery shopping with virtual assistants, paying bills, donating to charities and enterprise data integrations will only get bigger, with issues such as lag time will continue to shrink.
Get ready for autonomous finance where an app automatically creates a financial plan, helps start a saving plan or solves credit card/student loan debts.
Fintech evolved so fast in the past 12 months that the search for comprehensive algorithms and adoption of AI has doubled, with cases ranging from personalised client communication to speech to text transcription and analysis.
For better health: With development of AI and machine learning, we were awed last year by some of the new and better ways to identify health issues.
This year, AI and machine learning are expected to provide even better diseases diagnosis, develop treatment plans, monitor health epidemics and enhance medical research and clinical trials.
Last year saw the rise of wearables and the trend will only get bigger this year.
Tracking how many steps you walk each day and monitoring heart rhythms are some of the capabilities of a smartwatch today.
As technology grows, it is expected to incorporate ECG monitoring capability, making a trial fibrillation detection possible at any time.
Wearable tech will help users proactively get health support if there are anomalies in their trackers.
One report said that 3.4 million health care users worldwide favoured virtual and augmented reality apps as they brought considerable changes to healthcare service delivery and medical students training.
The capability of a healthcare centre to provide care in remote or under-served areas is limited but through tele-medicine, this will change.
With the rollout of 5G, more healthcare professionals can contribute remotely.
The fifth generation wireless technology for digital cellular networks can better support healthcare organisations by enabling large imaging files transmission so specialists can review and advise on care; allow for the use of AI and IoT technology; enhance a doctor’s ability to deliver treatments through augmented, virtual and mixed reality; and allow for remote and reliable monitoring of patients.