Welcome to PR Vibes™, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with key insights into the people, events and trends in the communications technology industry. Today, we have compiled the views from a variety of analysts and journalists to provide you with a few thought-provoking insights into what’s likely to be hot and or not in 2014. We’ll give you a sneak peek that the top 3 (repeatedly) are:
- Everything will be synced to the cloud
- Smart machines/ IoT/Everything Everywhere
- Wearables aren’t there yet, and
- Very interestingly, Vator predicts that 2014 will be “the biggest year for VCs since 2007”
Enjoy!
1. Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable.
2. Through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment.
3. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and consumer items such as cars and televisions. Yet vendors are not operationally or organizationally ready.
4. The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services.
5. Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning.
6. Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across several dimensions.
7. Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants, smart advisors, advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.
8. Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in 2015.
9. Disruption will increase among service providers, benefiting consumers.
10. T-Mobile and AT&T now offer new, no-contract rate plans for users who don’t buy a subsidized handset. Expect Verizon and Sprint to begin to experiment with those strategies in 2014 as well.
11. The increased competition new MVNOs provide may force traditional cellular operators to cut their prices to compete.
12. Apple’s iOS will make strong progress in the mobile enterprise.
13. Consolidation amongU.S. service providers will slow and the ranks of major network operators may grow (by one). The FCC is unlikely to approve a deal between Sprint and T-Mobile. But Dish Network could actually join the field of mobile service providers in 2014.
14. More advanced tablet-like sensors that track gestures and eye-gaze data brought to PCs.
15. Holographic interfaces “Soon, you’ll be able to bring Tupac to your own living room—just maybe not as big.”
16. Flexible, interactive screens will start to revolutionize not only smartphones and tablets, but also surfaces from indoor and outdoor walls to roadwork signage and public transport.
17. We expect more consumers to upgrade to SSDs, which offer nearly instant load and boot timescompared with hard drives.
18. Expect to see cloud-based DVRs.
19. The personal computing model will morph into an EC (“everything computing”) model. Most users will have three to six devices in use on a regular and continuous basis. Companies not focused on EC will become obsolete.
20. Google Glass will be a flop. “It looks obnoxious, it’s completely unnecessary, and it’s being banned left and right.”
21. Smartwatches are going to proliferate this year and will then disappear until there can be a better UI in that form factor.
22. As car manufacturers begin to unveil 2015 model-year vehicles, they’ll feature better smartphone integration, 4G LTE cellular connectivity, and built-inapp platforms than ever before.
23. Zero BlackBerryswill be sold at U.S. retail in the second half of 2014. It’ll be out of cash by the end of next year. If it survives, it’ll be purely as an enterprise services company.
24. MP3 Players – 2014 is the year that the only real player left will finally bail. Apple has already made its lastiPod, and will quietly exit the space, ending the era of the dedicated portable media player.
25. In the next 12 months, real-world deployments of software-defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) will accelerate.
26. Facebook will launch a new feature or campaign to try and win back the under-25 crowd.
27. In 2014, mobile video viewing levels willequal PC viewing for the first time, according to research firm Yankee Group.
28. In 2014, some banks will begin to experiment with wearable gadgets, such as Google Glass and smartwatches, to let customers receive balance alerts and more using the tech.
29. Mobile app frenzy will begin to fade and more enterprises in 2014 will increase usage of SMS, especially given consumer and employee familiarity with it.
30. Wireless network operators will begin to take LTE security seriously in 2014, in response to “more intense cybercrime focus on mobile networks and a rising incidence of hack, such as eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks and packet insertion.
31. Wearable tech, gamification and mobile payments will integrate in 2014
32. Mobile and digital currency will go mainstream in 2014
33. The “Internet of Things” will finally become a reality through a smart home tech explosion.
34. A new class of privacy protection companies and services willarrive in 2014, ready to meet what is sure to be a growing need following the Edward Snowden vs the NSA matchup.
35. Ads will be in everything. Scripted TV shows will build entire scripts around brands and products. In 2014, you’ll laugh about a Coca-Cola joke in Modern Family and guffaw when Mollyserves Mike a Big Mac. Pop artists will sing the praises of Nike sneakers and Rice Krispies.
36. Consumers will finally embrace cloud storage and they’ll require a lot more of it. Which may result in a price-per-gigabytewar amongst providers.
37. 4K TV prices will continue to plummet in 2014. When 60-inch 4K sets from Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Vizio and others drop below $2,000, consumers will start buying.
38. We will not emerge from 2014 with a consensus on drone use.
39. Nanotech breakthroughs in cancer, Alzheimer’s, vision and hearing loss, data storage and manipulation could all be on the menu in 2014.
40. A new generation of Bluetooth devices will enable merchants to connect to their customers as soon as they step into a store. This will open up the door to a wide range of incredible personal shopping experiences.
41. The entire hardware supply chain has become so efficient and standardized that it’s now possible to create small, powerful, and highly customized hardware devices at very low costs.
42. In 2014, we’ll see the emergence of authentication technologies that will begin to replace the password.
43. 2014 will see the death of the mobile Web, aka all of those sites that create mobile-only version of their sites.
44. Smartwatches will crash and burn.
45. Google Glass will be the wearable tech phenomenon that everyone expects it to be and that the world has been waiting for.
46. 2014 will be the biggest year for VCs since 2007.
47. LTE will make the spectrum-rich richer, and the spectrum-poor just a little better off
48. Band fractionalisation will be less of an issue thanks to broad device support
49. VoLTE will emerge as a (limited) market service. It’s unlikely to make a significant impact in 2014 because few countries will have the breadth of network needed for useful service.
50. Localization Continues to be emphasized for Chinese consumers.
51. OTT SVOD services will accelerate as a threat to traditional broadcastTV.
52. Smart TVs may or may not experience an iPhone moment.
53. Consumers will begin to experience autonomous driving.
54. Automotive connectivity UXwill reach a tipping point.
55. HMI advances in the car will deliver a safer connected experience
56. We will begin to see innovative operators separating out mobile video streaming as a premium service whether by tonnage or by time.
57. A significant number of rural carriers will implement LTE in 2014 – whether as a part of a top tier carrier’s program, building their own network or partnering with a hosted provider to leverage technology and expertise while saving capital.
58. In 2014, M2M will make a perceptible shift to richer data transport, with devices coming online that yield a much higher usage profile than our market has ever seen, leveraging both capacity and more attractive rates.
59. Postpaid Subscribers will Continue Move to Prepaid.
60. Using PCC, operators will begin to introduce data plans with a new level of personalization and customization, encouraging usage while maintaining fair use of limited network capacity.
61. 2014 will be a big year for network management. Over the last five years, things have become more consumerized, more virtualized, more mobile, more wireless.
62. For most mainstream enterprises, 2014 should be the year you learn about SDNs and what it can do and how it can benefit your organization. It’s not the year to deploy.
63. This will be the year IT relents, stops fighting and gets with the program formally by developing real strategies for embracing the cloud, managing cloud-based application deployments and empowering the business to keep being agile.
64. Wireless bargain hunters rejoice, carriers are finally listening. If you’re in the market for a better value for your wireless plan, 2014 should be a good year for you.
65. Wireless operators lobby hard in Washington. New Federal Communications CommissionChairman Tom Wheeler has taken office and one of his first orders of business was to delay the upcoming incentive spectrum auction.
66. T-Mobile shakes up the industry yet again with more of its “Uncarrier” strategy.
67. Sprint emerges stronger from its “rebuilding year”.
68. Microsoft kills Lumia brand.
69. The long-drawn out battle between Apple and Samsung over patent infringement will continue in 2014 and beyond.
70. Unlocked phones hit the mainstream.
71. LG re-emerges as a hot Android device maker, while HTC’s star fades.
72. Look for a sustained mobile mind shift. Customers and employees are beginning to expect that the information, services, social networks, and customer service will all be available to them in context on any device at their exact moment of need.
73. In 2014, intelligent agents will start to look….useful. Usable. More interesting. Easier. They’ll help people shop, manage calendars, and surprise users by mining personal data.
74. 2014 will be the year in which you walk into a store and it “knows you” and customizes your visit.
75. In 2014, Apple will diversify the iOS product base with major refreshes and perhaps larger devices (like the rumored 13″ iPad and iPhone Phablet).
76. Expect 2014 to be the year when Google tries to unite Chrome OS and Android.
77. Chinese vendors will make a play for top-tier status, attempting to become the next Samsung, leveraging their scale in the Chinese market, supply chain prowess, technological sophistication, and growing strategic and marketing savvy to break out of the pack.
78. There will be an acceleration in the growth of multi-media messaging.
79. Mobile payments will give carriers a share of over-the-top revenues.
80. Mobile solutions for the advertising space will be driven by big data.
81. Samsung’s lead in smartphones will decline.
82. HTML5 takes over the mobile web.
83. Android goes 64-Bit.
84. The concept of “Mobile” will die. Instead of thinking of things as “mobile” specifically, it will just be seen as a way to use a computer from anywhere and everywhere.
85. WorldwideIT spending will grow 5% year over year to $2.1 trillion in 2014.
86. Emerging markets will return to double-digit growth of 10%, driving nearly $740 billion or 35% of worldwideIT revenues.
87. The mobile device onslaught will continue in 2014 with sales of tablets growing by 18% and smartphones by 12%. The Android community, will maintain its volume advantage over Apple.
88. Cloud spending, including cloud services and the technology to enable these services, will surge by 25% in 2014, reaching over $100 billion.
89. Spending on big data technologies and services will grow by 30% in 2014, surpassing $14 billion as demand for big data analytics skills continues to outstrip supply.
90. Social technologies will become increasingly integrated into existing enterprise applications over the next 12-18 months.
91. The market for server, storage, and networking components will increasingly be driven by cloud service providers.
92. America Movil’s European expansion plans will remain on ice while it sets its sights on other regions. One possible target is the US, where the Mexican telco has been growing its presence via its Tracfone MVNO.
93. US telcos will not expand overseas, due to healthy ARPUs, increased competition to deal with in their home market, and remaining growth potential.
94. Europe’s cable operators will find themselves telco acquisition targets as mobile players discover that buying a fixed network is cheaper than building one.
95. Apple will pull the plug on the iPhone 5c…unless China’s TD-LTE market comes to the rescue first.
96. Talk of an Alcatel-Lucent/NSN mash-up will refuse to die. The fact that the merged entity would require phablet-sized business cards to accommodate the new name will turn out to be a dealbreaker.
And for fun…
InfoWorld – “Crazy Tech Predictions”
97. The NSA will secure every lastbit of data it has stolen. To document the magnitude of its achievement, the NSA will then print out all the data it has harvested and collate it into three-ring binders.
98. Windows 8 willadopt a new slogan: ‘That’s what she said.’
99. Amazon will print out infants and deliver them to parents using drones disguised as storks.
100. Googlewill release the Chromebot, a robotic personal assistant that requires an Internet connection to function, follows you around everywhere you go handing you targeted ads based on whatever you are doing at any given moment.
Which predictions do you think will pan out through 2014 and beyond?