Digital Lifescapes

The evolution of the smart and connected home has created new revenue growth opportunities for consumer electronics vendors and telecom service providers. According to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight, the number of smart homes in North America and Europe reached 45 million in 2017. The most advanced smart home market is still North America, having an installed base of 22.3 million smart homes at the end of 2017. This represents a market penetration of 15.9 percent. Smart Home Market Development Between 2016 and 2017, the smart home market grew by 40.7 percent year-on-year. Furthermore, the strong market growth in North America is expected to continue during the next five years. By 2022, Berg Insight forecasts that more than 63 million homes in North America will be smart -- that's estimated to be 44 percent of all homes in the region. That being said, the European market is still behind the North American market, in terms of penetration. There were a tot...

A relatively small group of savvy executives have strategies in place to harness new business process automation technologies and thereby advance their digital transformation agenda. Meanwhile, a much larger group is closely following the market leaders, to explore their lessons-learned from pilot projects. According to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research, new survey results suggest most organizations are adopting or considering artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) due to its commercial growth benefits, rather than the potential to cut jobs. Despite being somewhat new, there's adoption momentum for the technology. Machine Learning Market Development Almost 50 percent of their survey respondents have deployed or plan to deploy machine learning in their organizations within the next 12 months. Therefore, this paints a more optimistic picture of machine learning adoption than is often portrayed by other industry analysts. "Out of man...

Many business leaders have a much better understanding of blockchain technology than just a couple of years ago. There's been a surge in R&D, both internally and in partnership with third parties, and a recognition that blockchain has the potential to be deployed in a variety of commercial use cases. As the number of blockchain research projects increased, awareness among the pilot participants and elsewhere in their industries gained momentum. Now other companies are beginning to consider whether they, too, should seek to gain a competitive advantage from a proof-of-concept deployment. Blockchain Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, 65 percent of survey respondent enterprises with over 10,000 employees are considering or actively engaged in blockchain deployment. This marks a significant rise from 2017 when the corresponding figure was 54 percent. Moreover, nearly a quarter of companies considering deploying blockchain ...

Upgrading electrical grids and water infrastructure around the world with new capabilities -- such as network communications, remote and automated management of elements in the field, and new utility management functionalities -- continues to gain momentum. However, smart infrastructure demand means increased dependence on new technology and communications connectivity, which greatly introduces IT security risks. Smart Utility Market Development The new infrastructure can expand the number of threat vectors, rendering smart utilities vulnerable to cyber attacks. Maintaining resilient electrical power generation and transmission -- as well as water distribution and treatment -- are key to protecting the public utility environment. Therefore, effective cybersecurity must be a function of hardware, software, data, and networks. The modernization of utility infrastructures is enabling increased efficiencies and reliability through digitization, connectivity, and IT-based approach...

Advances in both the consumer and business technology sectors have driven the adoption of mobile internet access and associated service delivery.  Applications of mobile devices -- by customers, business partners, or employees -- delivers unprecedented access to information, improved collaboration, and increased productivity. Worldwide investment in mobility solutions is forecast to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). While annual growth will vary somewhat, IDC expects the overall five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will be 2.8 percent. Furthermore, mobility spending is already on track to reach $1.63 trillion in 2018. Mobility Solutions Market Development Consumers will likely provide more than 70 percent of worldwide mobility spending, with slightly more than half of this amount spent on mobile connectivity services and most of the remainder going toward new devices, such as smartph...

With password-based personal identity solutions becoming increasingly impractical, device vendors and mobile network service providers have begun implementing an alternative second factor -- using a fingerprint, iris, facial feature or vein pattern to establish an individual's identity. Biometric identifiers provide the user an additional layer of smartphone security. There is increased reliance on biometric user identification in the security industry itself -- iris and fingerprint scanning are commonplace in the U.S. market, as well as Europe and some other parts of the world. In the mobile communications arena, biometric recognition technologies are increasingly being deployed to identify mobile subscribers and to allow them to unlock their handsets, as well as being used as a method to authenticate the user when making a payment through mobile devices. Mobile Payments Market Development Juniper Research now predicts that the biggest shift in mobile payment security will...

After two years of collecting data from payment networks, payment processors, financial institutions, digital wallet providers and retailers worldwide, 451 Research has launched its Global Unified Commerce Forecast. Here's a summary of their findings. "The confluence of new technologies, new entrants and new consumer demands has catapulted retail into a state of flux," said Jordan McKee, research director at 451 Research . "These market shifts are influencing not only the way in which shoppers choose to obtain their desired goods and services, but also how and where they spend their money." Digital Commerce Market Development Their new research report provides quantitative guidance on these shifts in purchase activity in developed and emerging markets around the world. Among many findings, the latest 451 Research market study found several unique trends that will transform the retail sector in the years ahead. One out of every ten dollars spent global...

Within the telecom sector, the ongoing shift to software-defined infrastructure -- where IT workloads run virtualized or containerized on industry-standard hardware and software platforms -- is happening at an unprecedented pace. This transformation is visible across the whole communications industry, where entire data centers are now being converted from vertically integrated systems to software-defined IT infrastructure. Telecom IT Infrastructure Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), this trend will continue unabated as telecom service providers seek to expand their sphere of influence on initiatives such as mobile media delivery, edge computing, the Internet of Things and connected devices. In an industry where legacy business models and government regulations can no longer guarantee revenue growth, telecom service providers must address intense competition by advancing digital innovation and reducing their...

Why do most internet of things (IoT) analytics operations occur in the cloud? The public cloud offers a centralized location for large amounts of affordable storage and computing power. But there are many instances in which it makes more sense to perform analytics closer to the thing or activity that is generating or collecting data ­– equipment deployed at customer sites. This is particularly true in industrial and manufacturing environments, which are familiar with the challenges of managing massive amounts of unstructured data, but may lag when it comes to the virtualization of IT infrastructure. Industrial Cloud Market Development Advances in intelligent process manufacturing, factory automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning models all benefit from edge analytics implementations, yet will likely become islands of automation without a cohesive industrial cloud computing platform. The industrial cloud covers everything from the factory floor to the industrial ...

Through its ubiquity and reach, the mobile phone has become an enabler of financial inclusion for developing nations across the globe. Many countries in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region have experienced the rapid adoption of 'mobile remittance' services. Numerous telecom service providers have expanded and tailored their services to offer the world’s poorest populations access to more sophisticated products  -- such as personal savings and loans. Worldwide a large number of people who remain 'unbanked' are without a bank account or credit history. Financial Services Market Development According to the latest global market study by Juniper Research, the use of mobile devices to make retail and store payments will act as a driver for financial services inclusion of the unbanked in emerging markets. The research forecasts that mobile merchant transactions by unbanked individuals will grow from 1.8 billion per annum in 2018 to 3.8 billion...

The global public cloud computing market continues its predictable growth trend. By and large, it's viewed as an IT commodity, where customers have no loyalty to cloud service providers that follow a 'race to the bottom' mindset -- providing the lowest price at a given moment in time. That said, everything about this business model seems somewhat tentative. The worldwide cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market grew 29.5 percent in 2017 to reach a total revenue of $23.5 billion -- that's up from $18.2 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Moreover, Amazon was the leading vendor in the IaaS market during 2017, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and IBM. Cloud IaaS Market Development "The top four providers have strong IaaS offerings and saw healthy growth as IaaS adoption is being fully embraced by mainstream organizations and as cloud availability expands into new regions and countries," said Sid Nag, research direc...