Deloitte’s annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications forecasts, released yesterday, have been a feature of the IT scene for the past 15 years, and the focus this year is firmly on the rapid uptake of new technologies by consumers.
Deloitte expects the number of individuals using touch-based payment services on their mobile device to increase 150 percent, which should transform the overall mobile shopping experience and have a big impact on online buying.
There will also be a surge in the use of virtual-reality technology by gamers. Deloitte expects this to become a billion dollar market in 2016, with “headware” accounting for about 70 percent and content about 30 percent.
It estimates 2.5 million VR headsets will be sold during the year along with 10 million games with VR support. “VR in 2016 will be mostly for hardcore gamers willing to pay US$300+ for a new headset,” Deloitte says.
On the enterprise side, Deloitte predicts a big uptake of cognitive technologies, saying that, by year end it expects 80 of the 100 largest enterprise software companies to have integrated cognitive technologies in their products, a 25 percent increase on 2015.
For Deloitte, cognitive technologies is an umbrella term covering computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, optimisation, planning and scheduling, robotics, rules based systems and speech recognition.
One non-information technology makes it into Deloitte’s predictions: graphene, a single atom-thick form of carbon. “Graphene has the capability to change the way in which we interact with the world . The potential of graphene is phenomenal,” Deloitte says. But it adds: “Patience is vital: there are several challenges to be addressed before a graphene era can be realised.” – Stuart Corner
