7 Technological Trends to Watch For in 2020
We live in an era of technology and are surrounded by its numerous applications. Starting from developments in robotics and AI-based chat bots to the much-admired one-day delivery system by e-commerce companies to its customers and the increasing use of voice search worldwide, we rely on multiple technologies for our daily needs.
For example, Amazon, which offers one-day delivery to its prime members, became a retail segment worth $1.8B in 2017 in the U.S. alone and is projected to take it to about $40B by the end of 2022. This a testament to development at its best.
More and more companies have started deploying chat bots in recent years and this move has been pretty well received by their customers who, earlier, had no other choice but to call and discuss the smallest of their issues.
As 2019 is ending, it is time to think ahead and talk about what big tech-based trends that we are going to see in our daily life in 2020.
Mobile Commerce
Ever since smartphones were launched, mobile commerce has become an important part of over personal and professional lives. People have access to almost everything on their smartphones – be it online shopping from the comfort of their home, paying Wi-Fi bill, or buying their weekly groceries. They can make payment at the speed of a blink of an eye via intuitive mobile apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.
Well, in case you want to have a look at what life is going to be in a complete cashless era, you should hop on an airplane to any major Chinese city. Life has become much simpler for many using Alipay and messenger apps like WeChat for payments for almost anything.
5G Mobile Network
You are probably using or have at least heard about the 5G-based high-speed network that offers blazing-fast internet services. This is an indicator that you can expect more such efficient services, in the future.
Then there is the topic of “what 5G could do to your body” that has been a subject of seemingly unfounded concerns. However, it’s certain that that increased bandwidth is going to provide much faster internet services after a simple set-up is in place. The 5G system is also going to offer facilities like drones for home delivery and driverless cabs, which can connect and communicate with other similar devices in the vicinity at unforeseen speeds.
AI as a Service
A combination of the SaaS business model and the much-appreciated AI services have greatly helped bring AI to the masses, without the hefty price tags. Today, AI has reached advanced levels in some areas while it lags in other areas like speech recognition. AI provider in some areas have been offering services like process-intensive GPU workloads as well.
Multinational companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have already started offering courses like machine learning and other training materials. In 2020, we can expect proliferation in this very area and other specific AI-based subscriptions will be made available to end-users.
Data Analytics
Today, we have various web and app-based tools to measure the performance of a website, mobile site, and smartphone applications. We can efficiently check and implement different steps to cater to different audiences by feeding them content in text and video forms to their satisfaction.
By having the real-time data available on these platforms, we can also experiment with what form of the content does better for a website or app. In order to hold and retain our target audience, we can make the required changes wherever applicable as per the data provided by these platforms.
As per the popular belief in the tech-driven era, the data never lies.
Tech Growth in the Mid-Market
Every time we discuss growth or fallout across the global technology sector, we end up talking about the tech giants that have their respective roles to play. What is changing is the level of their interests in the mid-market business and whether or not it has any potential growth left.
When they come up with how to invest and operate in one or more emerging tech startups in online or offline businesses, we begin to see reports on the potential of this mid-market. At the same time, we also get to know the promising signs for the mid-sized content, the domain of e-commerce, and SaaS business. This has made many entrepreneurs come up with novel ideas to scale the gaps.
The Decline of App Downloads
While companies have their apps available for download in multiple app stores, having to look for a relevant app and downloading is a bit difficult for end users. Since there are multiple cloud-based app downloading platforms available, investing in only one fails to serve the purpose.
On the other hand, creating web-based apps is much more useful and cost-effective at the same time. However, with multiple options for each service, the market share for each app is greatly reduced.
Rising Cryptocurrency
Over the years, many cryptocurrencies have come into existence and gone obsolete over the years but Bitcoin certainly has dominated the market since the beginning. Bitcoin owns around 69%of the market and that too after falling as much as 35% back in January 2018.
In the past few months, the increasing price has actually raised multiple questions like whether Bitcoin would be a new form of digital gold. By 2020, the blockchain technology that began with Bitcoin is likely to have its applications in industries like healthcare, intellectual property, and asset management.
However, it’s yet to be seen whether Bitcoin and blockchain collectively will transform the way we all live.
Conclusion
The emerging technologies and their applications have the potential to radically transform the way we live. The list of technology trends we discussed above is not complete, as the developments are on-going. We can certainly expect 2020 to be a year full of tech-based revolutions.
