We are amongst the 4th Industrial Revolution, and technology is evolving faster than ever before. Many Companies and individuals that don’t show up with some of the major tech trends having the risk of being left behind. Understanding the key trends will allow people and businesses to prepare and capture the opportunities. As technology experts, it is our way to look ahead and identify the most important technology trends. In this article, I share with you the seven most imminent trends in 2020.
5G data networks
The 5th generation technology of mobile internet connectivity is going to give it’s users ultra-fast download and upload speeds as well as more stable internet connections. While 5G mobile data networks became available for the first time in 2019, they were mostly still expensive and limited to functioning in constricted areas or major cities. 2020 is the year when 5G really starts to fly, with more affordable data plans as well as greatly improved coverage, meaning that everyone can join in the fun.
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Super-fast data networks allow us the ability to stream movies and music at higher quality when we’re on the move. The greatly increased speeds mean that mobile data networks will become more effective even than the wired networks running into our homes and businesses. Companies must consider the business implications of having super-fast and stable internet access anywhere in the world. The improved bandwidth also enable machines, robots, and autonomous vehicles to collect and transfer more data than ever before, leading to advances in the area of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart machinery and manufacturing technology.
AI-as-a-service
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most transformative tech evolutions of 2020. Most companies have started to explore how they can use AI to improve the customer experience and to modernize their business operations. While people will increasingly become used to working alongside AIs, designing and implementing our own AI-based systems will remain an expensive plan for most businesses.
During 2020, we have seen bigger adoption and a growing pool of providers that are likely to start offering more customized applications and services for specific tasks. This will mean no company will refuse to use AI.
Autonomous Driving
While we still aren’t at the stage where we can expect to routinely travel in, or even see, autonomous vehicles in 2020, they will continue to generate a remarkable amount of excitement.
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has said he expects his tech company to build a truly “complete” autonomous vehicle by the end of this year, and the number of vehicles capable of operating with a lesser degree of autonomy – such as automated braking and lane-changing system – will become an extensively common sight. Furthermore, some features in-car systems not directly connected to driving, such as security and entertainment functions – will become increasingly automated and dependent on data capture and analytics. It won’t just be cars, of course – trucking and shipping are becoming more autonomous, and breakthroughs in this space are likely to continue to hit the headlines throughout 2020.
Extended Reality
Extended Reality (XR) is a term that covers several emerging technologies being used to create more appealing digital experiences. More specifically, it refers to virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Virtual reality (VR) provides a fully digitally immersive experience where you enter a computer-generated world using headset that blend out the real world. Augmented reality (AR) laminate digital objects onto the real world via smartphone screens or displays ( Snapchat filters). Mixed reality (MR) is an addition of AR that means users can now interact with digital objects placed in the real world ( like playing a holographic piano that you have placed into your room via an AR headset).
We have using these technologies for a few years now but have largely been confined to the world of entertainment – with Oculus Rift and Vive headsets providing the current futuristic technology in videogames, and smartphone features such as camera filters and Pokemon Go-style games providing the most visible examples of AR.
Individualized and anticipating medicine
Technology is currently transforming healthcare industry at an unrivalled rate. Ability to collect data from wearable devices such as smart watches give us the ability to increasingly predict and treat health related issues in people even before they experience any symptoms.
For treatment, we have seen much more personalized approaches. This is also used as precision medicine which allows doctors to more precisely prescribe medicines and apply treatments for a specific patient.
Although it’s not a new idea, but a big hand to recent breakthroughs in technology, especially in the fields of genomics and Artificial Intelligence, it is giving us a greater understanding of how different people’s bodies are better or worse equipped to fight off specific diseases, as well as how they are likely to react to different types of medication or treatment.
Computer Vision
Computer vision is a part of AI that trains computers to capture and understand the visual world. It includes systems that are able to identify items, places, objects or people from visual images – those collected by a camera or a sensor. It’s the technology that allows your smartphone camera to recognize which part of the image it’s capturing is a face, and empowers technology such as Google Image Search.
Computer vision is also enabling face recognition, which is an impressive achievement in 2020. We have already observed that how useful the technology is in controlling access to our smartphones in the case of Apple’s FaceID.
Blockchain Technology
Blockchain is a technology trend that is extensively being used this year, and yet you’re still likely to get blank looks if you mention it in non-tech-savvy company. It is essentially a digital ledger used to record transactions but very secured due to its encryption and decentralization. During 2019 some commentators began to argue that the technology was over-hyped and not as useful as first thought. However, bigger investments by the companies like FedEx, IBM, Walmart and Mastercard during 2019 is likely to start to show real-world results.
And now in 2020, Facebook’s own blockchain-based crypto currently Libra, which is going to create quite a stir.
