Digital Lifescapes

The collaborative robot (cobot) industry is advancing globally as more companies seek to lower manufacturing costs and increase the speed of production. While the established industrial robot vendors have made some progress, the pure cobot developers are creating ergonomic systems. Guided by early innovators and adopters, the collaborative robotics market will become mainstream over the next 10 years. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the yearly revenue for cobot arms will reach $11.8 billion by 2030 -- that's an increase from $711 million in 2019. Collaborative Robot Market Development Furthermore, the total value of the collaborative market is much greater, when accounting for software-related revenues and end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) accessories. Under this broader definition of the market, the cobot ecosystem is worth just over $1 billion in 2019 and will be worth $24 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 28.6 percent. "The prospects for the co...

Historically, the traditional insurance sector has been reluctant to change established methods. However, the relationship between insurance companies and technology vendors has evolved, as emerging Insurtech offerings disrupt the legacy insurer business model. The overall insurance market is experiencing significant upheaval, as new technology-enabled solutions impact the prior status quo. As an example, the use of price comparison websites is commonplace and other forms of customer-facing online services are widespread. However, the internal processes of loss notification, claims management and underwriting have not changed much from those used by insurers many decades ago. Therefore, savvy Insurtech vendors can help to revolutionize outmoded methods and introduce new ideas to the insurance marketplace. Insurtech Market Development That said, traditional insurers are now becoming increasingly involved within the Insurtech space, through direct investments and strategic partne...

The world of high-performance computing (HPC) will continue to evolve, as enterprise CIOs and CTOs anticipate the future demands for IT Infrastructure capable of supporting new workloads. That said, there isn't enough computing capability today to process the amount of data being created and stored, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The processing power required to convert the flood of structured and unstructured data into useful and valuable insights, for a new class of digital business workloads, must now scale faster than Moore's law ever predicted. HPC Platform Market Development To address this gap, the computing industry is taking a new path that leverages alternative computing architectures like DSPs, GPUs, FPGAs for acceleration and offloading of computing tasks in order to limit the tax on the general-purpose compute architecture in the system. IDC believes these architectures are key to the enablement of artificial i...

In the Global Networked Economy, your digital identity is very important. Every organization wants to know, from retailers to banks. There are two issues: fraudsters can exploit the system when an email address or password is all that's required. When the burden of proof is higher, this can be problematic for users. According to the latest worldwide study by Juniper Research, the applications of unique mobile identifier services, which provide secure digital identity verification through SIMs, will generate over $7 billion for mobile network operators in 2024. This estimate is up from an expected $859 million in 2019 -- a growth rate of over 800 percent. Digital Identity Market Development The new research findings noted that, particularly in emerging economies with limited government identity provision, mobile phones will become the primary source of digital identity for over 3 billion people by 2024. These will be used heavily because they are simpler to scale than card-b...

Why are more organizations creating Chief Digital Officer (CDO) roles? Why are CMOs and CIOs more likely to collaborate on new digital transformation projects? Digital business growth is driven by the development and deployment of superior online experiences. Three-quarters of the organizations surveyed by Gartner increased customer experience (CX) technology investments in 2018. Customer analytics continues to be one of the biggest investments, with 52 percent intending to increase funding in 2019, focusing on customer journey analysis, customer needs analysis, voice of the customer (VoC) and digital marketing. Customer Experience Market Development Gartner's 2019 survey gathered data from respondents in seven countries within North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, across a wide range of industries. The objective of the study was to understand the priorities, technology investments and high-stakes situations faced by organizations in the planning of their CX...

The Internet of Things (IoT) has numerous applications within the energy and utility sector. As an example, smart meter penetration in North America is forecast to reach 81 percent by 2024. A smart meter is a new kind of gas and electricity meter that can digitally send meter readings to the energy supplier for more accurate consumption readings. Smart meters can also provide in-home displays that enable the consumer to better monitor and manage their energy usage. According to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in North America will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8 percent between 2018 and 2024 to reach 142.8 million units at the end of the forecast period. Smart Meter Market Development Over the next five years, smart meter penetration among electricity customers in the U.S. and Canada is projected to increase from around 60 percent in 2018 to more than 80 percent by the end of 2024. "North Americ...

Most enterprise CIOs and CTOs now operate in a 'coexistence environment' where traditional data center (non-cloud), private cloud and public cloud all are an essential part of their IT infrastructure. This technology mix will continue in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, this mix will change slowly. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products for cloud environments -- including public and private cloud -- grew 11.4 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019 (1Q19), reaching $14.5 billion. IDC also lowered its forecast for total spending on cloud IT infrastructure in 2019 to $66.9 billion – that's down 4.5 percent from last quarter's forecast – with slower year-over-year growth of 1.6 percent. Cloud Infrastructure Market Development Vendor revenue from hardware infrastructure sales to public cloud environments in 1Q19 was down 13.4 percent compared to t...

The advantage of a digital wallet is that -- for both online and offline transactions -- it affords the user an opportunity to make secure, quick payments, obviating the need for a physical card or to enter bank details for every purchase. For the unbanked, it goes further, providing a means of economic inclusion, both as an alternative to cash payments and as a way of accessing financial services such as loans and savings accounts. For the wallet provider, service evolution from the early days of online payments and person-to-person remittance has enabled several fintech vendors to achieve a strong presence across the payments and retail ecosystems. This now extends both to offering offline and online goods payments on their own and third-party storefronts, together with loyalty programs, bill payments and digital banking services. Digital Wallet Market Development Spending via digital wallets across Europe and North America will increase by 40 percent this year to nearly $7...

New satellite constellations are being launched to improve the connectivity options for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Many application segments will benefit from these new constellations due to the larger range of coverage they offer when compared to terrestrial communication networks. Different IoT application segments require different types of communication connectivity. Some IoT apps will require real-time connectivity to have a constant flow of data and information, yet some will only require near real-time. IoT App Connectivity Market Development By 2024, there will be 24 million IoT connections made via satellite, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research. Their analysis unveils the long-term opportunity within the satellite space for the growth of IoT deployments, particularly in application verticals, such as agriculture and asset tracking. "Terrestrial cellular networks only cover 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, while satellite netw...