Technology surrounds us and affects everything we do in our daily lives. From the moment we wake up and check our smartphone for updates, to our working life and entertainment. This year was yet another great year in technology and we are expecting huge changes going forward. Let’s have a look at what 2016 has in store for us!
Can you remember the technology we used in year 2000 onwards? This was a time when broadband Internet was not common, your mobile was probably a Nokia with a small green screen and portable CD players was hot! Email was starting to be a popular thing, a few people had started sending SMS messages but there were no Social Networks.
A lot has happened in technology since then and here are our predictions for 2016
Mobile and wearables
Smartphones will continue to increase its importance in our lives in 2016. Mobile devices are taking over as our primary device as more than 60% of all activity online is traced back to these smart devices and no doubt that this will increase in 2016. Smartphones will increase in speed by about 60-70% and that will open up for more advanced software and apps, which will add value to your daily life.
Here at Cloudnames we monitor traffic to our website and some of our blog articles have had visitations of up to 95% from mobile devices! If you are planning to design a website it must be mobile responsive.
There is a trend that is growing stronger on personalising the user experience for the individual user as well. By collecting information of each individual user companies can expose them to content that is more relevant.
As an example my online bank knows my age and it knows that I would not be interested in financing studies but still it exposes me for that offer – because it assumes I may have children that may require financial support. Personalised user experience is of course more important and we will continue to see great advancements in 2016.
This year Apple Watch was available across the globe and according to the rumors it has taken 80% of the smartwatch market. (Apple is quiet about sales numbers.) We will probably see a new version in 2016, with more power, more sensors and huge improvements in software. Also we expect an explosion in apps for watches, which will mean that we can leave our phone in the pocket while checking for updates on the phone. We believe that fitness bands will struggle and lose popularity over more functional watches this year as well.
In 2016 we expect to see more advances in sensors both on phones and wearables. This will enable even better software for fitness, outdoor activity, navigation and possibly within nutrition and health in 2016. Also we believe that 2016 will be a breakthrough year for mobile payment solutions.
Google glass is rumored to come in a new version in 2016. Even though it is a very cool product we don’t expect it to be a huge success. But the Microsoft HoloLens and VR-glasses like Facebook Oculus Rift will potentially change gaming experience and be mainstream in 2016.
Social Media Networks
Social Media (SoMe) dominates much of online activity today- it’s the most popular and effective way of interacting with friends, brands and following news. During this year the development in SoMe have been explosive, and we expect even bigger developments in the coming year.
In the new year, we are expected to see bigger opportunities in communication, interaction, advertising, buying and selling goods (or services) on Social Media networks. Last time we checked, there were more than 2 billion active social media users globally, and it’s reported that these numbers will continue to grow 25% each year going forward. Facebook alone reported 1,55 billion active users in November.
In 2015, we saw a 69% increase in content creation on SoMe Networks, and that growth will continue in 2016. In a recent survey 70% of marketers said they would allocate larger budgets on content marketing in 2016.
Other trends that will be significant in 2016 is increase in use of video content, more diversified apps, SoMe Networks will develop more complete services to keep users on their platforms, like Facebook new News service; Live Articles that will be rolled out globally. Also services like Lead ads that let advertisers collect leads without having to move the viewer to the advertisers website, which increase speed and reduce time to leave contact data as it links into already existing user data.
Read our predictions for the trends in Social Media for 2016 in this article.
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Digital Virtual Assistants
We think 2016 will be the year where digital assistants get their real breakthrough. Sure, Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft Cortana have already been around for a while, and Amazon Echo and Facebook M are available too. But all of these digital assistants have up to now had a limited value for consumers, and hence they have not been that much used.
This may all change in 2016, as we see the level of services they can perform are increasing, language support and understanding is improving and they are implemented across all platforms including in your car, watch and your home entertainment system.
In all this improvement may take the digital virtual assistants over the top and make people start using them much more. This will happen because the machine learning have come to a mature stadium and users are nudged into using them.
For instance Siri on the new Apple TV is impressive, and hence it is more compelling to start to ask her to answer text messages and note down reminders as well. With further developments she will be able to not only schedule meetings, but follow up and book them as well.
We expect huge improvements in the virtual assistants in 2016 and a breakthrough in widespread use. Accelerating returns on machine learning will make them much smarter in the year to come and more widespread use will allow better development as they get more experience with user feedback and questions in addition to more specialised tasks they can handle.
Cloud computing
This year Cloud computing has had an annual growth of about 66% in measure of storage space (According to Cisco) – and you guessed right; it will continue to grow even faster than that in 2016.
New disruptive digital business models are brought to life across the globe every hour. And now new companies and existing are all building their digital services in the cloud. If your company is still clinging on to your own server farm in the basement you are throwing money out the window.
There is just no way that traditional business models can compete with cloud based services. This is however good news for entrepreneurs that start from scratch and have no investments in legacy solutions and software.
Today a startup or established company can get instant access to any and all services they need to run their company and smart, user friendly solutions are available at the fraction of the cost as cloud services.
And in 2016 new services will be popping up that are more competitive, user friendly and easy to integrate in the running of your or your company’s daily life. Enterprises will embrace the API economy and supply access to their core assets, allowing new services to be created and new channels to utilize and distribute content.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and IBM are big players in Cloud computing, offering excellent services. And new players are born every day with new and disruptive services. They will all continue to increase the quality of service and reduce the price in 2016 as competition is fierce.
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Internet of Things
Will 2016 be the breakthrough year for the Internet of Things (IOT)? Today you might own a car, television or stereo that is connected to the Internet and available from most of your devices. Even light bulbs, alarm systems, heating, scales and many other things can be connected.
But is has not really become truly mainstream yet. We are not sure 2016 will take us all the way, but it is certainly going to take us a huge step in the right direction. The reason for this is the many initiatives from Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft and a few other big phone and TV manufacturers mainly. Your phone, TV and set-top-boxes will become the home center for IOT.
Software is defining everything today, and with all new things getting connected the challenge today is standardisation and common user interface. This is where the mentioned companies all have launched initiatives to unify the user experience so that you can handle all connected devices in one app and automate the communication between the devices.
Today the vision of the Internet of everything(IOE) is about the services that are connecting and interconnecting everything and enabling casual programming through natural speech.
We are not convinced that the breakthrough will be in 2016, but we sure will take a huge leap forward. And if this is not common in the end of next year it will be sometime the following year.
Big Data
Solutions that make it possible to collect and analyse large amounts of data in real time and enabling decisions based on facts are called “Big Data”. Today there are easily available tools that allow tracking of customer behavior and statistics from your website, social media channels, buying patterns and what consumers are talking about.
Solutions like Google Analytics and IBM’s Watson can be used free of charge to analyse and present results from your data, and there are many other solutions available.
This field is expected to continue to develop extremely in 2016 both on harvesting data, analysing it and suggesting decision in capacity planning and resource utilisation based on the findings.
If you have not started to tap into these kind of solutions you are missing out on valuable fact based decision criteria. This will be important for any company that wants to grow and compete in 2016.
What will be the biggest technology advances in 2016? Check out our candidates @cloudnames
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Smart machines
Robotics companies have given us automatic lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and window washers and research into making smarter machines are surging. Did you know that planes are mostly run on autopilot from takeoff to landing? Pilots only take over to get training or in emergencies.
Production robots have been used for years and in production factories they are easily programmed to repeat boring or dangerous production tasks 24/7. The Chinese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn bought 10.000 new production robots in 2015 to increase its production capacity.
For 2016 we expect car brands to offer more automation like for instance the new Tesla cars that can drive by them self (but as driver you still have to be alert.) We are not sure when Google will launch it’s self driving car, but we know that it already is a safer driver than humans.
Also the Japanese Softbank Corp launched Pepper this year, a personal robot with the ability to read emotions. Softbank have not been able to meet demand even if it is only launched in Japan. The November batch of 10.000 units was sold in one minute.
Another company that is investing billions of dollars in robotics is Google (Alphabet). They have bought about 20 companies the last few years researching robotics technology, among them Boston robotics.
We expect that the advances in smart machines will be extraordinary in 2016, but we think it is a bit early for widespread use of self driving cars and personalised robots. But surely your next vacuum cleaner or lawn molder may be automatic and soon self driving cars and personalized robots will be mainstream too.
Other candidates
3D printing is a hot technology that did not make the cut with us for 2016. Sure we will see many exciting developments next year, but we think it will take a few more years before you have a 3D printer in every home. And the biggest challenges is development of materials.
Other candidates worth mentioning are biotechnology, green energy, renewable energy, nanotechnology, smart homes and health care technologies. We will have to come back to those technologies another year.
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