Digital Lifescapes

Traditional telecom service providers and mobile network operators have many challenges that impact their ability to generate new growth. That said, the situation is more problematic for those companies that had also invested in legacy pay-TV business models. Looking ahead, the next few years are likely to be confounding. Worldwide spending on telecom services and pay-TV services will reach $1,633 billion in 2019, and that's an increase of 0.8 percent year-on-year, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Furthermore, IDC forecasts that those same services will reach $1,647 billion in 2020, representing an increase of just 0.9 percent. Given that assessment, the senior executives that lead these companies will seek ways to change the status quo and transform their business model. Telecommunications Market Development Mobile communications remain the largest segment of the market, accounting for 52.8 percent of the total in 2019. The mobi...

The Global Networked Economy is fueled by the growing adoption and application of digital commerce innovations. In many instances, digital commerce enables wholesale supplier or retailer customers to purchase goods and services through an interactive and self-service experience. It includes the people, processes and technologies to execute the offering of development content, analytics, promotion, pricing, customer acquisition and retention, and customer experience at all touchpoints throughout the customer buying journey. That's one view of the evolving eCommerce landscape. Digital Commerce Market Development Industry analysts also segment the overall digital commerce market into payments, banking and gambling as its principal segments, which are then further broken down into their respective sub-segments. It's important to appreciate that these segments are not mutually exclusive and necessarily intersect with one other to varying extents. Boundaries between the segme...

Telecom service providers across the globe have invested significantly in updating their network infrastructure to take advantage of the operational efficiencies enabled by each new generation of wireless communications technology. The next wave of investment has already begun. According to the latest global market study by ABI Research, fifth-generation (5G) wireless is expected to have 12 million connections worldwide by the end of 2019. The number of 5G connections will then grow rapidly to 205 million worldwide at the end of 2020. 5G Infrastructure Market Development The new generation is expected to grow much faster than anticipated, and it's believed that 5G connections will overtake 4G connections in 2025. ABI Research expects approximately 3 billion 5G connections in 2025 with 4G declining from its current 3.9 billion to 2.2 billion in the same year. "Despite the challenges faced by early adopters and the relatively high prices of 5G-capable smartphones in 2019...

Information Technology (IT) infrastructure investment can fluctuate based upon the annual shifts and changes in demand. Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.7 trillion in 2019 -- that's an increase of just 0.4 percent over 2018, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. That said, this has been the lowest IT growth forecast in 2019. However, Gartner believes that global IT spending will likely rebound in 2020 with forecast growth of 3.7 percent, primarily due to enterprise software spending. Information Technology Market Development "The slowdown in IT spending in 2019 is not expected to stretch as far into 2020 despite concerns over a recession and companies cutting back on discretionary IT spending," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner . Today’s complex geopolitical environment has pushed regulatory compliance to the top of organizations’ priority list. Overall spending on security increased by 10.5 percent in 2...

Digital transformation is a strategic priority for many organizations. It involves managing the legacy IT environment while building a new infrastructure to enable digital growth. Savvy CIOs and CTOs will adopt intelligent platforms that enhance their internal business processes and improve external stakeholder engagement. That's why enterprise investment in the technologies and services that enable digital transformation is forecast to reach $2.3 trillion in 2023, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Digital Transformation (DX) spending is expected to steadily expand throughout the 2019-2023 forecast period, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate of 17.1 percent. Digital Transformation Market Development "We are approaching an important milestone in DX investment with our forecast showing the DX share of total worldwide technology investment hitting 53 percent in 2023," said Craig Simpson, research man...

The initial commercial interest in cryptocurrency IT infrastructure was the potential to enable an alternative to government-backed fiat currencies. However, now most of the forward-looking focus is on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins the new applications. Although deployments are still very much in the realm of the early adopter, blockchain has proven advantages across several vertical industries: it is safe, decentralized, transparent and can reduce intermediary costs. Blockchain Use Case Market Development While many CIOs and CTOs believe that blockchain likely has a way to go before becoming a mainstream technology within their sector, five compelling use cases across asset tracking, financial services and digital identity are already in production. They offer valuable business process improvements to the pioneering organization that has already deployed a blockchain -- whether in terms of increased efficiency, reduced fees and fraud, or full tra...

How can IT vendors and cloud service providers differentiate their artificial intelligence (AI) offering, when the solutions tend to have the same basic capabilities? The answer could be new semiconductor chipsets that disrupt the status quo. During the last two years, several hyperscale cloud service providers -- including Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Huawei, and Tencent -- have been busy designing their own in-house chipsets for handling AI workloads in their data centers. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, cloud service providers commanded a 3.3 percent market share of the total AI Cloud chip shipments in the first half of 2019. AI Chipset Market Development These players will increasingly rely on their own in-house AI chips and will be producing a total of 300,000 cloud computing AI chips by 2024, representing 18 percent of the global cloud AI chipsets shipped in 2024. The requirements for intelligent services by many enterprise vertical...

Outdoor surveillance cameras will be the largest market for 5G wireless Internet of Things (IoT) solutions worldwide over the next three years, according to the latest global market study by Gartner. The municipal deployed surveillance camera market will represent 70 percent of the 5G IoT endpoint installed base in 2020, before contracting to 32 percent by the end of 2023. 5G IoT installed endpoints for outdoor surveillance cameras will reach 2.5 million in 2020, 6.2 million units in 2021 and 11.2 million units in 2022, but will be surpassed by connected cars in 2023. 5G IoT Applications Market Development "Cameras deployed by city operators or used to ensure building security and provide intruder detection offer the largest addressable market as they are located outdoors, often across cities, and require cellular connectivity," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, senior research director at Gartner . Gartner predicts that the 5G IoT endpoint installed base will more than...

By the end of 2019, eCommerce will have a significant role to play in economic growth, with 44 percent of the global population forecast to purchase physical goods and 27 percent purchasing digital goods. Moving deeper in the digital era, retailers are now focused on customer retention and reduced costs through the application of new technologies -- such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, internet of things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communications (M2M), among others. The growth of eRetail transactions has been so significant over the last decade that online payments for physical goods purchases exceeded the $2 trillion mark for the first time in 2017. Two years later, the market size has grown to $2.9 trillion spent online for the purchase of physical goods worldwide in 2019; reaching a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.8 percent. Payment Platforms Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, revenue from payment p...