Thursday 3 August 2017

Looking to 2020 – IT trends in the Media Sector

By Loren Stow


























The International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts global IT spend will exceed £2tn by 2020, and while PC, tablet and smartphone sales show signs of plateauing, the market’s 3.3 percent upward trajectory over the next four years will be sustained by the digital transformation found on third-party cloud and mobility platforms.

Healthcare will remain the fastest growing sector in the run-up to 2020 with a projected 5.7 percent rise in IT spending, followed by the banking, media and professional services sectors at 4.9 percent each. So where are the opportunities in each of these sectors? Where do their technological challenges lie? And, what technology-specific solutions will each sector look for as 2020 looms large on the horizon?

In this blog series we take a look at each sector in more detail in the coming weeks, however if you’d like to request a copy of the complete white paper, please click here. In case you’ve missed them, we’ve already taken a look at the Healthcare & Banking sectors.


Sector Trends – Media

“The year is 2020. There are 9 billion people in the world, over 9 billion mobile broadband subscriptions and 1.5 billion homes with digital television. Over 26 billion connected devices rely on a global IP (internet protocol) network dominated by video. The new era of entertainment and connectivity has arrived and the Networked Society is a reality. The year is 2020 and where are you?” – Ericsson’s Media Vision 2020

In a sector this size with every platform being majorly influenced and disrupted by technology, we look at seven trends that are most applicable:

1. The Internet of Things is not really about things


The World Economic Forum has already predicted that by 2020 almost every company will be in the IoT-business as the digital and physical worlds inevitably converge. The product-centric business model will shift to a service-centric business model as products which deliver dynamic and ever-improving value become the norm. “This will change the fundamental way in which businesses operate, interact with customers and make money. Those who recognise that the internet of things isn’t about things but about service will be positioned to meet these new customer demands, unlock new sources of revenue and thrive in this connected world,” says Jahangir Mohammed, CEO of Jasper Technologies Inc.

2. The Internet of Me 

Personalisation and customisation will be key to the customer-journey come 2020, “Customers will not tolerate companies that have amnesia when it comes to remembering them and their preferences for recognition,” says Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, “If they collect all my personal data then they should at least use all that data to understand me before they interact with me.”

3. The PC is not dead and buried


Research done by Deloitte US has found that while mobile technology is important, millennials are still very much pro-PC and see their smart phones and laptops as complimentary instead of alternatives. In fact, three quarters of 14-25 year olds say that a laptop and smart phone are part of their top three valued devices, the third being a combination of gaming consoles, flat screen televisions and desktop computers.

4. Cognitive technology software

Deloitte Global predicts that by the end of this year in excess of 80% of the world’s 100 major enterprise software businesses will have incorporated cognitive technologies into their products, by 2020 that will be 95%. In the immediate future these technologies are likely to take the form of

· Machine learning by constant exposure to real time data which will result in the ability to predict, detect differences and personalise responses.

· Natural language processing in which computers process written text in the same way that humans process auditory language, so that they would be able to extract meaning and come up with a response that is legible, stylistically natural and grammatically correct.

· Speech recognition will be expanded upon so that computers could not only accurately transcribe speech but also make hands-free applications more common-place.

Enterprise application and infrastructure software as well as vertical specific software will make these technologies a reality and enable enhanced functionality, lead to significant new insights and increase automation.

5. Smartphones as an extension of self 

Deloitte’s 6th annual Mobile Consumer Survey 2016 had some interesting insights into smart phone usage. Key findings include:

· Almost 50% of millennials check their phone in the middle of the night

· 27% of smartphones now have fingerprint readers and of these 76% are used

· The Internet of Things is not taking off quite yet with only 2% of adults using connected home devices such as smart lights or smart appliances.

· 4G adoption has more than doubled in the last year from 25% to 54%

31% of smartphone users make no traditional phone calls in any given week, this is up from a quarter in 2015 and only 4% in 2012.

· The majority of those surveyed have downloaded no more than 20 apps.

· By 2016 almost two-thirds of adults have access to a tablet but penetration growth has slowed down.


6. Virtual Reality

Amidst very mixed projections for the future of VR, leading sector research company Context believes that virtual reality awareness has reached a tipping point. Excitement, they explain, lies in consumers’ ideas of how VR can positively impact entertainment, sport and education. However, there is still a long way to go before consumers would be willing to pay the price that this type of technology demands, and so cost will have a major impact on consumer adoption. For example, only 35 percent of those surveyed said they would invest between £100-£200, four in ten respondents believed VR headsets were too expensive, and a whopping 73 percent said that they’d like to wait before investing in the platform.

This hesitation is a plus for traditional retailers who are perfectly positioned to create VR spaces within their stores so that consumers can experience VR for themselves. This would no doubt promote awareness and drive consumer adoption especially considering that 4 out of 5 respondents acknowledged that they didn’t know enough about virtual reality and place a demo high on their priority list before buying.

7. Lifelong students

The fact that the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not even exist in 2004 points to the swift pace at which technology is disrupting existing jobs. At the time of studying, students and employers alike do not actually know what skills are going to be needed five or ten years down the line. This trend is set to continue and the way in which education and training will respond will likely be more widespread access to training and courses online and available on-demand so that workers can integrate new skill updates in real-time while they work in order to ensure that their skills remain relevant in the workforce.

Request a copy of the full white paper here



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