Five Leading Industries will Fuel Blockchain Growth

It's already clear that most savvy industry leaders have a greater understanding of blockchain technology than was the case a couple of years ago. This stems from a surge with internal research and development, in partnership with third parties, as blockchain has the potential to be deployed in a variety of use cases.

As the number of Hyperledger pilot projects increased, so has awareness. It's improved among the project participants and elsewhere in their industries, with competitor companies beginning to consider whether they should seek to gain a competitive advantage from a blockchain deployment.

Blockchain Applications Market Development

According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, blockchain deployments will enable banks to realize savings on cross-border settlement transactions of more than $27 billion by the end of 2030, thereby reducing costs by more than 11 percent per on-chain transaction.

According to the analyst's assessment, financial services firms that integrate blockchain should achieve cost reductions in payment processing and reconciliation, and in treasury operations and compliance.

Indeed, the researchers argued that in compliance, automation of identity or money-laundering checks -- allied to a capability of the blockchain to verify the digital identity of an individual -- should enable savings of up to 50 percent of the existing costs base within a few years.

However, the researchers also cautioned that the need to parallel-run blockchain-based services with legacy IT systems would mean that savings would not be realized for several years after initial deployment, with annual cost reductions not reaching $1 billion per annum until 2024.

The market study findings identified potential savings for consumers and enterprises across a range of industries, from reduced fees for home buyers to fraud in the food export trade, where it estimated that blockchain deployments would reduce the cost of fraud by ~50 percent within 12 years.

Meanwhile, the research also assessed the extent to which thirty-four leading blockchain providers were best positioned to deliver innovative solutions and achieve significant market growth.

Outlook for Blockchain R&D Investment

The research analysis includes three Innovation Indices -- Digital Identity, Provenance, and Financial Services -- based on a quantitative and qualitative assessment of product offerings, R&D activities and future potential. In each index, Juniper discovered that IBM emerged as a market leader.

"IBM continues to demonstrate innovation and leadership across a range of verticals. Over the past 18 months, it has attracted dozens of corporate clients, with deployments now moving from proof of concept (PoC) and trial to full commercial rollout," said Dr. Windsor Holden, head of forecasting & Consultancy at Juniper Research.

Why Real Digital Transformation is Hard to Achieve

Becoming a Digital Business is very challenging because it demands new thinking, a willingness to evolve and bold ideas. As market leaders continue to embrace a digital transformation agenda, they're finding that the transition requires significant changes to organizational culture and internal systems.

A recent Gartner survey found that a relatively small number of organizations have been able to successfully scale their digital business initiatives beyond the experimentation and piloting stages.

"The reality is that digital business demands different skills, working practices, organizational models and even cultures," said Marcus Blosch, research vice president at Gartner. "To change an organization designed for a structured, process-oriented world to one that's designed for ecosystems, adaptation, learning and experimentation is hard."

Gartner has identified six barriers that CIOs must overcome to transform their organization into a truly digital business. Savvy CEOs and line of business (LoB) leaders will expect meaningful plans to fix these known obstacles to progress.

A Change-Resisting Culture

Digital innovation can be successful only in a culture of collaboration. People have to be able to work across boundaries and explore new ideas. In reality, most IT organizations are stuck in a culture of change-resistant silos and hierarchies.

CIOs aiming to establish a digital culture should start small: Define a digital mindset, assemble a digital innovation team, and shield it from the rest of the organization to let the new culture develop. Connections between the digital innovation and core teams can then be used to scale new ideas and spread the culture.

Limited Sharing and Collaboration

The lack of willingness to share and collaborate is a challenge not only at the ecosystem level but also inside the organization. Issues of ownership and control of processes, information and systems make people reluctant to share their knowledge.

Digital innovation with its collaborative cross-functional teams is often very different from what typical enterprise employees are used to with regards to functions and hierarchies -- resistance is inevitable.

The Business Isn't Ready

Many business leaders are caught up in the hype around digital business. But when the CIO or CDO wants to start the transformation process, it turns out that the business doesn't have the forward-thinking talent skills or resources that are needed to succeed.

"CIOs should address the digital readiness of the organization to get an understanding of both business and IT readiness," Mr. Blosch advised. "Then, focus on the early adopters with the willingness and openness to change and leverage digital. But keep in mind that digital may just not be relevant to certain parts of the organization."

The Ongoing Talent Gap

Most organizations follow a traditional pattern -- organized into functions such as IT, sales and supply chain and largely focused on operations. Change can be slow in this kind of legacy  business environment.

Digital business innovation requires an organization to adopt a different approach. People, processes and technology blend to create new business models and associated services.

Employees need new skills focused on innovation, change and creativity along with the new technologies themselves -- such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Current Practices Don't Support the Talent

Having the right talent is essential, and having the right practices lets the talent work effectively. Highly structured and slow traditional processes don't work for digital business. There are no tried and tested models to implement, but every organization has to find the practices that are best suited to their needs.

"Some organizations may shift to a product management-based approach for digital innovations because it allows for multiple iterations. Operational innovations can follow the usual approaches until the digital business team is skilled and experienced enough to extend its reach and share the learned practices with the organization," Mr. Blosch explained.

Change Isn't Easy

It's often technically challenging and expensive to make digital business work. Developing platforms, changing the organizational structure, creating an ecosystem of partners -- all of this effort requires an investment in time, resources and money.

Over the long term, enterprises should build the organizational capabilities that make embracing change simpler and faster. To do that, they should develop a 'platform-based strategy' that supports continuous change and design principles and then innovate on top of that platform, allowing new services to draw from the platform and its core services.

Progressive Local Governments Invest in Smart Cities

Smart City initiatives are one of the most important developments worldwide in public sector digital transformation. Given the crucial role that cities will play in both overall digitization efforts and the development of national economies, the largest or fastest-growing use cases have the attention of municipal leaders across the globe.

Smart City initiatives will attract technology investments of more than $81 billion globally in 2018, and spending is forecast to reach $158 billion in 2022, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Smart City Initiatives Market Development

"We are now delivering detailed sizing of 25 named use cases, as well as the first release of a new database of spending at City level," said Serena Da Rold, program manager at IDC.

Intelligent transportation and data-driven public safety remain the largest investment areas, but IDC analysts report they are also finding significant pockets of investment and growth in back-office and platform-related use cases, which are less often publicized but increasingly happening behind the scenes in cities around the world.

That being said, the three largest use cases, which will attract nearly one-quarter of global Smart Cities spending in 2018, are fixed visual surveillance, advanced public transit, and smart outdoor lighting.

By 2022, intelligent traffic management will overcome smart outdoor lighting in the third position, and the top three use cases will only account for one-fifth of total spending, as smaller and fast-growing use cases emerge and reach critical mass.

Officer wearables and vehicle to everything (V2X) connectivity, in particular, will generate the fastest growth, although they currently start from a small base in most regions.

On a geographic basis, the Asia-Pacific region, including China and Japan, will account for nearly 42 percent of global spending in 2018, followed by the Americas (33 percent), and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) (25 percent). The United States is the largest country market for Smart City spending (over $23 billion in 2018), followed by China.

According to the IDC assessment, the three largest use cases appear among the top five in terms of spending across all regions, but other use cases that emerge among the largest current Smart Cities investment areas include mobile video capture and recording in the United States and Latin America, and digital permitting, licensing, and inspection in the Middle East and Africa region.

Outlook for Smart City Technology Investment

Spending by the 53 Cities that are currently sized in IDC's database accounts for around 15 percent of global Smart City spending, with Singapore, Tokyo, New York City, London, and Shanghai leading the way in terms of 2018 investments.

"IDC expects to see strong, continued investment by the private and public sector in urban areas and in Smart Cities and Communities programs and projects," said Ruthbea Yesner, vice president at IDC. "This also means that it is a more competitive market."

Worldwide Contactless Payments will Exceed $1 Trillion

There's a huge upside opportunity for digital payment innovation in America. As of December 2017, Juniper Research estimates that only 9 percent of the total payment cards in circulation within the U.S. market was contactless-enabled -- this translates into just over 100 million cards.

While this is a significant installed base -- around 13 percent of total chip cards issued in the U.S. market -- Juniper estimates that only 5.5 percent of the cards were actually used to make contactless offline point-of-sale purchases in 2017.

This translates into about 6 million contactless cards used for payments. That's relatively low in comparison with more advanced markets such as Canada (60 million) and the UK (108 million).

Contactless Payment Market Development

Juniper Research forecasts that driven by payment cards and mobile wallets, in-store contactless payments will reach $2 trillion by 2020 -- that represents 15 percent of the total point of sale transactions.

Furthermore, contactless payments will exceed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 2018, a year earlier than previously anticipated by Juniper analysts.

However, contactless transactions will continue to be dominated by card payments, driven by strong adoption in Europe as well as the Far East & China.

Indeed, contactless card payments are the strongest across Far East & China and Rest of Asia Pacific, which together account for nearly 55 percent of global contactless card transaction values.

According to the Juniper assessment, the mobile contactless payments market will be driven by Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay and other OEM Pay wallets. Combined, these OEM Pay wallets users will reach 450 million by 2020, with Apple accounting for 1 in 2 OEM Pay users globally.

"We believe that growth over the next 5 years will continue to be dominated by offerings from the major OEM players," said Nitin Bhas, head of research at Juniper Research. "Additionally, we now have the likes of Huawei Pay and Fitbit Pay launching in several markets."

Consequently, Juniper now forecasts that OEM Pay wallets will enable over $300 billion in transactions by 2020, representing 15 percent of the total contactless in-store transactions.

Outlook for Contactless Payment Application Growth

Beyond in-store payments, the analyst forecasts rapid growth in contactless ticketing payment, especially in the European and North American markets where mobile wallets have been deployed.

Juniper forecasts nearly 10 billion mobile contactless ticketing transactions, i.e. tickets purchased or validated, by 2022, with North America dominating the sector, followed by the Far East & China.

Smart Homes Enable New Models for Healthcare Services

Home-based healthcare options have exploded since the availability of internet access has become pervasive. Moreover, as healthcare shifts from reactive to proactive patient care, a huge market is ready for automation products that can help deliver health and wellness services through smart home solutions.

The ubiquity of broadband connectivity, development of smart sensors, and the decreasing costs of devices have already made it possible to offer aging-in-place, chronic disease management, and post-acute care services in smart homes.

Smart Healthcare Market Development

However, digital health vendors are striving to take telehealth to the next level by developing solutions that will allow caregivers to check on the health of all the residents of the house, not just the patient's, monitor diet and nutrition, the environment, and overall wellness, and be integrable with existing and newer systems.

"Patients are conscious of their health quotient and want to be involved in the wellness and disease management," said Sowmya Rajagopalan, global program director at Frost & Sullivan. "With consumerization of healthcare, enabling patients to clinically manage their disease at home has been of crucial importance for care providers and OEMs today as they have made this a reality with the launch of innovation in design, devices, services, and solutions."

The latest Frost & Sullivan market analysis examines the concept of a smart home delivering healthcare. It segments all the resident profiles and lists the individual health needs that are relevant to healthcare delivery in the home.

The health and wellness segment of the "connected homes" market revenues was $6.67 billion and it's expected to grow to $22.26 billion by 2022 -- that's at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.3 percent between 2017 and 2022.

Several vendors have unique capabilities and value propositions to serve the smart homes market for healthcare delivery, with a variety of their smart solutions. That said, there are further expansion opportunities in the healthcare segment:

• Providing an intelligent layer that will collect and analyze data to generate precise, customized insights for sharing with residents, caregivers, and clinical care teams;
• Developing solutions that enable further actions, such as hailing an ambulance or notifying the care team of a heart attack or a fall;
• Enhancing pre-defined architecture, protocols, and standards to enable easier integration of products into platforms; and
• Offering smart thermostats, virtual voice assistance devices, and smart security systems, in addition to ensuring tech development for residents, patients and caregivers.

Outlook for More HealthTech Innovations

Any solution that can monitor the health of various individuals in a single house, using cross-industry business models, while operating in a stringently regulated industry, will have to be highly dynamic, integrable, and interoperable.

While the barriers to market entry seem high, there are substantial opportunities for automation and HealthTech vendors that are keen to develop technologies, products, and models for this market.

Applications for Robotics Technology Gains Momentum

Manufacturers have traditionally been considered the primary drivers of new robot technology investment. Robots are now infiltrating other business sectors. The robotics industry gained new momentum in 2017 with total venture capital (VC) investment reaching $2.7 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research.

"While the growth in investment from 2016 to 2017, at 23.2 percent, slowed from growth between 2015 and 2016, this was affected by applying a narrower understanding of robotics, leaving out categories like autonomous cars," said Rian Whitton, research analyst at ABI Research.

Robotic Technology Market Development

Had the same definition of robotics been used as in previous years, total investment would have exceeded $5 billion. Given the narrower definition, the sizeable increase in investment is a further indication of the growing confidence in the robotics industry, and the sense of urgency investors have in funding these key technologies.

That being said, the robotics market is still evolving. In analyzing the geography of the 152 companies that received VC investment, there were striking differences to 2016.

While in terms of the number of investments were largely similar, with the United States retaining over half the number of individual investments and China following a distant second, when cumulative investment was considered, the United States had lost significant market share, accounting for 49.4 percent of funding ($1.4 billion) as opposed to 63 percent in the previous year.

Moreover, despite accounting for only 11 percent of the individual investments, Chinese companies took 37 percent of total funding.

When breaking down the regional and municipal locations of companies that attract investment, they are heavily centralized in both the United States and China. In the former, California (the San Francisco Bay area, in particular) and to a lesser extent, Massachusetts, dominate.

In China, investments are moving primarily to Shenzhen and Beijing, the two centers of the China robotics industry.

"Perhaps the most exciting news from the 2017 investment is what it reaffirms. Not only is interest in robotics growing, but funding is being directed to areas of nascent development, rather than comparative safe bets in process and discrete manufacturing," Whitton noted.

Over $500 million was invested into commercial and consumer health robotics, while close to $500 million went to autonomous mobile robots specifically designed to function outdoors, a major expansion on the increasing popularity of Automated Mobile Robots (AMRs) in indoor locations like warehouses.

Among the market verticals of the AMR’s that received funding included construction, a currently untapped market for robotics. Other areas of outside investment included agriculture and last-mile delivery -- including companies like Starship Technologies and Nuro.

Outlook for Robotics Technology Investment

Although often overlooked in market analyses, consumer robotics saw significant investment, with over $800 million worth of funds directed to companies designing products for the home. Seventy-five percent of these were directed to toy robots and personal ‘smart’ robots. This was impacted heavily by a choice number of significant investment into Chinese consumer robotics companies such as UB Tech.

According to the ABI assessment, venture capital investment in robotics has accelerated since 2015, and 2017 will not be the end of this trend, with current evidence already suggesting 2018 will represent another year of success for robotics companies seeking funding.

IoT Cybersecurity Solutions Revenue will Reach $6B

The dramatic increase in internet-connected devices has created a significant attack surface for hackers and cybercriminals. Applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) are growing. As a result, the related challenges associated with IoT data security and privacy will increase with time.

Whether their motive is simply mischief, theft, or some other goal, the impact of IoT-related criminal activities can be far-reaching and very costly. Vendors of cybersecurity software and services will, therefore, experience growing demand for their offerings.

IoT Security Market Development

According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, spending on IoT cybersecurity solutions is forecast to reach over $6 billion globally by 2023.

The analyst has highlighted rapid growth, with spending by product and service providers (in consumer markets) and end-customers (in industrial and public services markets) to rise nearly 300 percent over the forecast period.

Juniper also claimed that the growing business risk and increasing minimum standards set by new government regulations would serve as key spending drivers for new IT infrastructure investment.

Juniper believes that there are major differences in the way in which IoT business risk is perceived and perceptions on how regulation should be applied.

Juniper cited the home as an example of where poor long-term device support and little fear of ramifications in case of a breach would serve to keep spending low.

"The interconnected nature of the IoT means that even innocuous devices like the connected refrigerator can become a threat. Vendors see that risk as low, while little has been done from a regulatory perspective to protect consumers," said Steffen Sorrell, senior analyst at Juniper Research.

As a result, Juniper forecasts that smart home IoT security spending would be less than 17 percent of the consumer market in 2023. In contrast, the research identified glaring security issues in the smart energy market.

However, it noted that strict minimum standards, such as those applied by Germany and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), would drive spending impetus, with IoT smart energy security spend reaching $1 billion annually in 2023.

Outlook for IoT Security Application Growth

The research forecasts that the rise of edge computing services to enable near-real-time IoT applications would present additional security challenges, which in turn will drive industry investment in cybersecurity technology. It cited an increased attack surface as raising business risk.

Meanwhile, the need to ensure data reliability would emphasize the need for lifecycle management and IoT device security solutions.

Digital Device Shipments Still Impacted by Lower Demand

The consumer electronics and mobile device vendors have experienced a significant slowdown in demand, due to a number of related factors that result in the ongoing downward trend. This is a global phenomenon, where few markets across the globe are likely to drive significant new growth opportunities.

The combined personal computer (PC), media tablet and smartphone markets are on pace to record 0.9 percent growth and eventually reach 2.28 billion units in 2018, according to the latest worldwide study by Gartner. The PC and tablet market is estimated to decline by 1.2 percent in 2018, while the mobile phone market is forecast to increase by just 1.4 percent.

Digital Device Market Development

"The PC market is still hindered by the undersupply of the DRAM market for all of 2018, due to the lack of new wafer capacity coming online. As a result, PC vendors will continue to increase their prices throughout 2018," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "Larger screens and more graphic boards also mean rising costs, adding to the bill of hardware materials for businesses and consumer buyers."

While the PC market is price-sensitive, Gartner is anticipating business user demand migrating to high-end PCs -- such as ultramobile premium devices -- where the overall value is better. Gartner now estimates that shipments of ultramobile premium units to increase by 12 percent in 2018.

The next major shift in the PC market will be marked by the end of support for Microsoft Windows 7 in January 2020. "It is becoming paramount for businesses to migrate to Windows 10 as soon as possible, and certainly by the end of 2019," said Mr. Atwal.

North America kicked off the first Windows 10 migration phase in 2015 and will complete around 2019. Western Europe is increasing its adoption in 2018. However, in China, Japan and other emerging regions, migration plans are shifting from 2018 to 2019 as they continue to prepare for inherent complications in changing process and procedures for Windows-as-a-service.

While the global device market is affected by macro-economic factors and technology developments, it can also be influenced by the Chinese device market alone. "China accounts for over 20 percent of global spending on devices so any changes occurring there can have a significant ripple effect globally," said Mr. Atwal.

With nearly 1.9 billion units to be shipped in 2018, mobile phones are the main influencer of the global digital device market growth. In China, mobile phone sales declined 8.7 percent in 2017 to 428 million units, but are estimated to grow 3.3 percent in 2018 -- representing 23 percent of total mobile phone sales this year.

Outlook for Asia-Pacific Upside Growth

The traditional PC market in China is on pace to decline by 1.7 percent to 38.5 million shipments in 2018, representing 21 percent of global traditional PC shipments. According to the Gartner assessment, the reduction will come despite China being business-dependent, with two-thirds of PC shipments coming from the enterprise and commercial market segment.

"The downward trend that China is experiencing is undoubtedly affecting the worldwide device market," said Mr. Atwal. "China is an interesting country to watch this year. The continued roll-out of a Chinese version of Windows 10 in the second half of 2018 as well as Apple iPhone's replacement cycle expected through 2019 will generate demand."

Blockchain Spending will Double in 2018 to Reach $1.5B

A blockchain acts as a digital distributed ledger of transactions or records. The ledger, which stores the information or data, exists across multiple participants in a peer-to-peer network. There's no single, central repository. Distributed ledgers technology (DLT) allows new transactions to be added to an existing chain of transactions using a secure cryptographic signature.

Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecast to reach $11.7 billion in 2022, according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Blockchain Market Development

IDC expects blockchain spending to grow rapidly throughout the 2017-2022 forecast period, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 73.2 percent. Moreover, worldwide blockchain spending will reach $1.5 billion in 2018 -- that's double the amount spent on the emerging technology during 2017.

The United States will see the largest blockchain investments and deliver more than 36 percent of worldwide spending throughout the forecast. Western Europe will be the next largest region for blockchain spending, followed by China and Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan and China).

All nine regions assessed by IDC will experience significant spending growth over the 2018-2022 forecast period, with Japan and Canada leading the way with CAGRs of 108.7 percent and 86.7 percent, respectively.

Blockchain spending will be led by the financial sector ($552 million in 2018), driven largely by rapid adoption in the banking industry. The distribution and services sector ($379 million in 2018) will see strong investments from the retail and professional services industries while the manufacturing and resources sector ($334 million in 2018) will be driven by the discrete and process manufacturing industries.

In the U.S. market, the distribution and services sector will see the largest blockchain investments. The financial services sector will be the leading driver in Western Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA), China, and Asia-Pacific in 2018.

The industries that will see the fastest growth in blockchain spending will be process manufacturing (78.8 percent CAGR), professional services (77.7 percent CAGR), and banking (74.7 percent CAGR).

Within the financial sector, blockchain lends itself to a number of common use cases including regulatory compliance, cross-border payments & settlements, custody and asset tracking, and trade finance & post-trade/transaction settlements. In the distribution and services sector and the manufacturing and resources sectors, the leading use cases include asset/goods management and lot lineage/provenance.

Cross-border payments & settlements will be the use case that sees the largest spending in 2018 ($193 million), followed by lot or lineage provenance ($160 million) and trade finance & post-trade or transaction settlements ($148 million). These three use cases will remain the largest in terms of overall spending in 2022 as well.

"We continue to see the greatest spending and growth for blockchain around lot lineage and asset and goods management. Highly visible scandals combined with complex supply chains and incomplete information set the stage for investments and projects in these areas," said Jessica Goepfert, program vice president at IDC.

Outlook for Blockchain Technology Investment 

From a technology perspective, IT services and business services (combined) will account for roughly 70 percent of all blockchain spending throughout the forecast with spending fairly well balanced across the two categories.

Furthermore, blockchain platform software will be the largest category of spending outside of the services category and one of the fastest growing categories overall, along with security software.

Evolution of the Mobile Telecom Service Business Model

Mobile communication service providers across the globe have been eager to uncover new sources of subscriber revenue as over-the-top (OTT) apps continue to disrupt their traditional business model offering voice calling and text messaging.

These operators are currently under pressure due to investment in emerging technologies, including 5G and M2M networks. Thus, they must develop and deploy new capabilities that can leverage their networks to both increase revenues from voice services and reduce OPEX (Operational Expenditure).

That said, the latest worldwide market study from Juniper Research has found that operator-billed mobile voice revenues will fall from $354 billion in 2018 to $197 billion by 2023 -- that's an average annual decline of 10 percent.

Mobile Services Market Development

The new research, Mobile Voice: Operator Strategies & Vendor Opportunities 2018-2023, identified a series of new opportunities which collectively would enable mobile network operators to sustain, or even increase service revenues.

5G & AI Enabling New Business Models

Juniper identified 5G as critical for operators to slow declining voice revenues. It is expected that 5G connections will exceed 370 million by 2023; generating $88 billion in operator-billed revenues. This will be over 50 percent of the anticipated voice revenue loss. It also argued that operators could generate additional revenue through support for new voice services; powered by technologies such as Google’s Duplex.

CPaaS (Communications Platforms-as-a-Service) Disruption

In order to capitalize on revenue streams for emerging voice services, Juniper advises that mobile network operators must adopt new ecosystems of converged technologies -- including voice, messaging and digital assistants. It predicted that operators will facilitate this by supporting the CPaaS model, whereby central management of communication is offered via a single platform.

The VoLTE Opportunity

The analyst forecasts significant growth for OTT software apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. These apps will generate 15.7 trillion minutes of voice usage by 2023; equivalent to streaming 3.8 trillion music tracks.

In response, Juniper urged operators to rollout voice technologies that offer superior benefits and are easily integrated into this CPaaS approach, such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE).

Outlook for Mobile Service Innovation

"The OTT ecosystem is fragmented and, as a result, is unable to offer the same level of reach as mobile network operators. In order to maximize OTTs shortfall in this area, operators must adopt the CPaaS approach to win back traffic, thus minimizing future shortfall in revenues," said Sam Barker, senior analyst at Juniper Research.

Moreover, Juniper forecasts that VoLTE users will exceed the OTT voice app users for the first time in 2020, a year earlier than they had previously anticipated.