Trends Identified
RCS Messaging to Contest Chatbots & OTT Business Platforms
RCS has undergone a significant transformation from previous iterations of the messaging technology. Support of RCS will continue to grow over 2019 – amongst both operators and handset vendors. At present, there are over 60 operators supporting the service globally – with more operators expected to announce their support in 2019. 2019 will shape up to be a crucial time for operators wishing to curb the migration of mobile messaging traffic to OTT messaging apps and chatbots. Accessibility and management of the service for brands will be provided by CPaaS vendors, leaving little to no investment needed into infrastructure from operators - just a flat fee to the CPaaS provider. Using RCS for business messaging, or application to person messaging, will provide new revenue streams if the technology is implemented correctly. As a result, this places increased pressure on these OTT messaging apps, their business platforms and in-app chatbots as brands gravitate to the superior capabilities and reach of RCS. As the reach of RCS increases so does the value proposition for its usage in contacting customers, thus increasing adoption of the service further. This will create a virtuous circle, in which the value of RCS only continues to increase. Thus, the timing of implementation is crucial, or operators risk losing A2P messaging traffic to other messaging services in addition to P2P traffic. We anticipate advertising and retail to be the first industries to adopt RCS messaging on a large scale; further encouraging a number of other industries to look into the service. Additionally, we can expect a large amount of focus of MWC 2019 to be on RCS, notably on the revenue potential that the technology will bring operators – and what role the technology will play in the wider CPaaS ecosystem. Related Research: Mobile Messaging: Operator Strategies & Vendor Opportunities 2018-2022
2019
Top Tech trends 2019
Juniper Research
The mobile internet and democracy: less citizen empowerment than we thought?
Realtime communications via internet and large-scale participation in social media can for the purposes of convenience be referred to
as the ‘mobile internet’. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it has already shown its potential to impact political affairs. The Arab Spring, the Umbrella movement in Hong Kong, and the emergence of new political parties in Europe, all owe a great deal to the emergence of new, internet-based channels for communication and networking. What impact will the mobile internet have in the coming years? One scenario is of greater participation in debate and in elections; another is of knee-jerk responses crowding out more deliberative and strategic policy-making. Some emphasise
the prospect of individual empowerment, while others worry about
a dumbing-down of the political process. A more fundamental question is whether the balance of power will ultimately shift towards, rather than away from, incumbents, who tend to have greater capacity to store and analyse user data.
2016
Global Trendometer - essays on medium- and long-term global trends
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Regulatory Landscape
Recent regulations across industries (e.g., financial and healthcare) have affected business models, increased costs, and come with a number of global considerations regarding legal implications.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Land Tenure and Access
Recent trends in both rural and urban areas in sub- Saharan Africa suggest that the institutions governing land access may become a critical source of tension in the coming decades. Land tenure systems need to be able to respond to demographic, physical and economic pressures. However, the process of change is typically very slow, and societal constraints on public action may be substantial.
2011
Africa in 50 Years’ Time
African Development Bank
Solar and wind may become cost-effective
Recently, there have been significant improvements in both solar and wind technologies, including cheap printing processes for solar panels. Many science sources suggest that solar and wind energy may become the most cost-effective choice for new electricity generation in many locations within 15 years. As solar and wind have become more affordable, massive research and venture capital has been going into battery storage for homes, buildings and vehicles. Effective and economical battery storage is on the horizon. It is the key enabling technology to ensure that buildings using renewable energy are powered during cloudy and windless days.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Advanced Domestic Waste Sorting and Recycling System
Recycling technology which categorizes waste materials into metal, plastic, paper, etc., maximizing recycling and waste-to-energy recovery
2017
10 emerging technologies in 2017
South Korea, Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP)
Regenerative medicine and tissue engineering
Regenerative medicine has developed from new scientific discoveries, notably in the stem cell field. It offers hope for life-threatening or untreatable diseases, such as Parkinson's or Huntington's disease, and provides new approaches to treat diseases with serious societal impact, such as diabetes, and for the ageing population.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Land registries based on Geographic Information Systems
Registers developed on the basis of geographic information systems are a system for quantitative and qualitative information on the state of natural resources, their economic and social value, as well as the breakdown and categories of users. All registers contain explicit and implicit spatial data; however, under the existing system the accumulation and storage of information on their “spatiality” is not in any way used in the procedures of services connected with the extraction and comparison of information stored in multiple registers. The creation of registers based on integrated GIS platforms will reduce the time taken to provide a service to a few minutes (currently, in Russian departments it can take days or weeks). During their development, there may be potential to allow for integration into other GIS platforms and databases. Moreover, keeping registers will open up a broad range of analytical capabilities and will become a key factor in the development of state and municipal services on an entirely different level.
2016
Russia 2030: science and technology foresight
Russia, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Cryptographic technologies are ensuring data integrity
Regulations such as GDPR in Europe and the misuse of personal information on social media highlight the importance of trust in a system where data is shared between different parties. Yet data needs to be protected in a way that adds value to the end user. Financial firms’ data is often shared internally and externally. Many workflows are regulated, and firms must follow a proof of process when it comes to the custody and provenance of data. They must demonstrate to auditors, regulators and customers that systems are functioning as prescribed, workflows are completely auditable, repeatable and immutable, and measures are established to prevent security breaches. Data lineage, a data lifecycle that includes the data’s origins and where it moves over time, is becoming more critical and can become a competitive advantage. A recent trend is to leverage cryptographic libraries, public key infrastructure, blockchain and zero knowledge proofs to record who did what, when and where in workflows in an immutable, persistent, auditable and impermeable fashion. These technologies ensure integrity starting with the first person who enters data through all its transfers and transformations. Potential applications include managing the publication of earnings reports, anti-money-laundering and know-yourcustomer compliance, risk and surveillance. The technologies could also help to improve customer service. For example, money that is held captive on margin could be freed up by allowing a prime broker and executing broker to contribute data to a secure multiparty compute service that calculates a credit score. That could help to reduce the margin requirement. The technologies could be used to create a certificate authority in the cloud, so users could verify that the service that they are about to run came from the correct source and was unmodified in transit. Together, they could also be used as a formative technology to create a data marketplace where the fidelity, integrity and lineage is guaranteed. A zero knowledge proof is a severable technology, allowing for secure multiparty computation to occur. Let’s say two people each have a dataset that neither wants to share. But they would like a mechanism so they can contribute those datasets into a piece of compute that would transform it privately into a result that both people would find mutually beneficial. This technology would prevent data sharing, and the result would redact all information that would prescribe the origin, who owned it, or any details of it. One can imagine valuable use cases in research and development work across many industries and functions including healthcare clinical trials and supply chain management.
2019
NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward
Nasdaq
An ECG on your wrist
Regulatory approval and technological advances are making it easier for people to continuously monitor their hearts with wearable devices. Fitness trackers aren’t serious medical devices. An intense workout or loose band can mess with the sensors that read your pulse. But an electrocardiogram—the kind doctors use to diagnose abnormalities before they cause a stroke or heart attack— requires a visit to a clinic, and people often fail to take the test in time. ECG-enabled smart watches, made possible by new regulations and innovations in hardware and software, offer the convenience of a wearable device with something closer to the precision of a medical one. An Apple Watch–compatible band from Silicon Valley startup AliveCor that can detect atrial fibrillation, a frequent cause of blood clots and stroke, received clearance from the FDA in 2017. Last year, Apple released its own FDA-cleared ECG feature, embedded in the watch itself. The health-device company Withings also announced plans for an ECG-equipped watch shortly after. Current wearables still employ only a single sensor, whereas a real ECG has 12. And no wearable can yet detect a heart attack as it’s happening. But this might change soon. Last fall, AliveCor presented preliminary results to the American Heart Association on an app and two-sensor system that can detect a certain type of heart attack. —Karen Hao
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review