By Kymberly Martin
Smarter smartphones, indoor navigation, 5G and more.
For the first time professional services firm Deloitte is including technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sectors together as it looks into the future. The TMT Predictions Report predicted the top 10 global trends likely to affect the industry at a media briefing at the Deloitte head office in Sydney.
Heading the list was the elevation of the smartphone with over 300 million smartphones, or more than a fifth of units sold in 2017, to have on-board network machine learning capability. Head of TMT practice, Stuart Johnston said it will enable users to have a smartphone in their hands with individualised services provided when not connected to a network.
This will enhance applications such as indoor navigation, augmented reality, speech recognition and language translation, with little or no Wi-Fi connection in remote areas, underground or on an aircraft. Machine learning on-the-go will not be restricted to smartphones but likely to be found in drones, tablets, cars, Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality or virtual devices and medical tools.
One of the new technology frontiers is digital navigation indoors which Deloitte expects to be similar or greater than outdoor digital navigation. It is helping to redefine the shopper experience to find goods and receive messages as customers walk past shops. “Given their ready adoption, the use of beacons in Australian stores might be a useful counter to the technology-enabled shopping experiences provided by retailers such as Amazon in their Amazon GO stores,” Johnston said.
5G, the evolution revolution with its high speeds and greater efficiency is expected to open new opportunities as this next generation of mobile networks is developed. According to TMT partner, Stuart Scotis, most of the handsets sold in Australia since 2016 include capability to access this type of network enabling high speeds.
Tablet sales are also predicted to decline by 10% globally in 2017 to fewer than 160 million units. This is being attributed in part to improvements in mobiles and computers.
TV advertising is also expected to be flat in line with TV advertising in the US, as TV’s authority fell for the first time here in four years in 2016. “Social media recommendations surpassed TV for the first time in their influence on buying decisions,” TMT senior partner Clare Harding noted.
“There has been a huge demographic shift with TV audiences fragmenting especially across younger generations. “The challenge for Australian broadcasters will be in capturing and maintaining the value of an older audience as younger Australians grow their use of streaming services,” Harding said.
Other forecasts were an increase in cars being fitted with automatic emergency braking; an increase in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDos) – a form of cyber -attack; an increase in fingerprint usage for added security and convenience; a rise in spending for IT-as-a-Service for data centres, software and services; and finally a resurgence in demand for the vinyl audio format although its revival is expected to remain a niche market with new and used discs generating 90% of revenue and the remainder made up by turntables and accessories.