Digital Lifescapes

Following a disappointing year in 2016, when the Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) payment cards market nearly came to a complete halt, ABI Research now expects that the market will bounce back this year with an anticipated annual growth rate of 4.6 percent. The EMV market problems began in 2016 with overstocking issues in the U.S., causing shipments to drop by 18 percent. Additionally, the market in China reached saturation and was further impacted by new legislation limiting the number of accounts one citizen is permitted to own at a singular bank. Both issues in China resulted in a card shipment decrease of 8 percent YoY. Global EMV Market Development All eyes are now firmly fixed on the U.S., China, and India, driven by an expectation that over 56 percent of all EMV cards issued globally in 2017 will be issued into one of these three countries. India will be one of the positive growth factors in the near-term future, currently in the early stage of EMV migration which will...

Much of the initial interest in cryptocurrencies centered around their potential as alternatives to fiat currencies. Now attention has shifted to the upside potential of open distributed ledger technologies know as blockchain. A clear indication of blockchain's increasing maturity is how the emerging Fintech sector, which was once dominated by tech start-ups, is becoming crowded with leading IT platform providers -- many of whom are developing their own offerings. The market leaders have been involved in collaborative ventures and consortia. As an example, IBM unveiled Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) for developers back in February 2016 that's based upon the Hyperledger Fabric. Blockchain Market Development Meanwhile, market demand is growing rapidly across vertical industries. Juniper Research has found that 57 percent large corporations are either actively considering, or are in the process of deploying, blockchain technology, according to the analysis of the data f...

Telecom service providers in the Asia-Pacific region are actively virtualizing their network architecture. A flurry of new applications development is driven by open source communities -- such as OPNFV and ONAP -- as well as from individual efforts by telcos. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, the network function virtualization (NFV) market in the Asia-Pacific region will grow to $9.24 billion in 2022. NFV Market Development in Asia-Pacific Japan is the largest single market within the Asia-Pacific region, constituting 25.7 percent of the total NFV revenue. This is followed by South Korea and China, at 22.7 percent and 14.6 percent of the revenue growth respectively. "Japan leads in the region, not only because of the desire to design resilient and reliable networks in preparation for future disaster threats, but also to prepare for the 2020 Summer Olympics," said Lian Jye Su, senior analyst at ABI Research . South Korea and China are actively pr...

Cloud computing services supported by converged networks will create new opportunities for forward-looking senior executives to make informed decisions and gain significant new strategic competitive advantages. According to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan, transaction data is the new currency for the digital enterprise and high-speed, dedicated and secure network connections are crucial for senior decision makers to monetize their commercial data residing in cloud services. Furthermore, an integrated network with cloud services will ensure a secured network to deliver business-critical applications and data to support executives in achieving their digital transformation agenda and related business outcomes. Converged Infrastructure Market Development Industry verticals, both traditional and emerging, are already investing heavily in integrated networks as part of their cloud-first journey to leverage next-generation technologies -- such as big data, analytics, a...

Expect to see more announcements about business video applications for new emerging technologies, throughout the remainder of 2017 and beyond. This growth will span across numerous industries. Virtual Reality (VR) is often viewed through the lens of consumer-driven gaming, but in a recent B2B technology survey of 455 U.S.-based companies across nine vertical markets, ABI Research finds that while only 4 percent of respondents have VR in operation, 85 percent are at least in the stages of early investigation. In fact, of the thirteen technologies highlighted in the survey, VR fell roughly in the middle of the pack, ahead of other innovative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and indoor location. Virtual Reality Market Development "Despite VR being a new technology, with some setbacks already evident, the survey yielded some surprisingly positive results for VR in enterprise and commercials spaces," said Michael Inouye, principal analyst at ABI Research . ...

Three significant business technology trends will enable business leaders to thrive over the next five to ten years. Artificial intelligence (AI), transparently immersive experiences and new digital platforms will provide the foundation that enables organizations to connect with new business ecosystems. "Enterprise architects who are focused on technology innovation must evaluate these high-level trends and the featured technologies, as well as the potential impact on their businesses," said Mike J. Walker, research director at Gartner . In addition to the commercial impact, these trends provide an upside opportunity for enterprise architecture experts to help their senior business leaders respond to digital transformation opportunities by creating actionable plans that guide IT investment decisions. Digital Transformation Market Development Artificial intelligence technologies will be the most disruptive trend over the next decade, due to radical computational power,...

The relative ease, convenience and reach facilitated by online channels for businesses has led to the development of a broad set of digital services. The accessibility of the Internet and the ability to commit fraud remotely creates an appetizing prospect for criminals. Meanwhile, the potential attack surface for miscreants is enormous; some 94 billion transactions were made for remote goods purchases in 2016, which is only a fraction of the total eCommerce landscape. A new market study from Juniper Research has found that spending on online fraud detection and prevention (FDP) solutions will reach $9.3 billion by 2022 -- that's an increase of 22 percent over this year’s anticipated spend. FDP Market Development The research found that perceptions of high software costs, combined with relatively low awareness of effective solutions in the eCommerce space, were slowing service adoption. Nevertheless, it predicted that several factors would prove instrumental in driving the m...

Worldwide revenues for the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market are forecast to increase by more than 100 percent over each of the next four years, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Total spending on augmented and virtual reality products and services is expected to soar from $11.4 billion in 2017 to nearly $215 billion 2021, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 113.2 percent along the way. AR and VR Market Development The United States will be the region with the largest AR/VR spending total in 2017 ($3.2 billion), followed by Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) ($3.0 billion) and Western Europe ($2.0 billion). But then APeJ jumps ahead of the U.S. in total spending for two years before its growth rate starts to slow in 2019. The U.S. then pushes back into the top position in 2020 driven by accelerating growth in the latter years of the forecast. Meanwhile, Western Europe is expected to overtake APeJ f...