At the beginning of the year I always dare to take a look at the coming year. 2019 will also be another year of innovations and technological breakthroughs for our everyday lives and for our companies. From new AI solutions like Google’s Duplex to the breakthrough of 5G. The coming year will also bring many innovations and will be a year of automation and reconstruction.
As already mentioned in the forecasts for 2017 and 2018, there have been some promising developments in recent years. Even if not all technologies have taken up the speed that would have been desirable, they have paved the way to market maturity.
2019 – A year of application fields
This year, technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and blockchain are being given a new foundation, which opens up previously unthought fields of application for them.
2019 may not be as fast-paced as previous years in terms of innovation cycles, but many theoretical concepts will give rise to application scenarios this year. This innovative discovery phase is also bitterly necessary, as no well-founded understanding has yet developed among people of what the new technologies can bring in terms of acute advantages. For this reason, here is my look at the Trends 2019.
5G finally arrives
Few things were discussed as intensively as the benefits of 5G for the progress of digitisation. 5G has always been hailed as a groundbreaking, super-fast mobile broadband connection that will enable all kinds of technological applications. But there was a problem: nobody could agree what 5G is.
In 2018 the first definitions and specifications came up, what 5G is and what the new technology can do. The rest of the year was used for field testing. In 2019, 5G is to be rolled out more widely.
If you follow Telekom’s and Co’s plans, almost every major metropolitan region should be equipped with 5G by the end of 2019. Rural areas will probably have to wait until 2020, as there are still many locations there that do not even have an LTE service. But 5G will become reality in 2019 and it remains to be seen what the new mobile standard will bring.
Chatbots get a right to exist
In the last year there have been many experiments with language assistants and Chatbots. Even though Alexa’s and Co’s sales figures have developed more than positively, 2018 was now anything but a year of breakthrough for the technology. But current developments in natural speech processing and mood analysis are impressive. Google’s Duplex is just one of many examples of where chatbot technology is currently evolving. According to current studies, about 40% of the larger companies plan to introduce their own chatbot systems, which will probably make it one of the most important trends in the new year.
Automation and Robotics
This trend for the coming year is not about automation and mechanization itself, but about the fact that robotics needs something that will surprise some readers now – automation needs people.
According to current Forrester forecasts, there is an acute shortage of specialists in the field of automation and robotics. Therefore, in 2019, HR departments will go in search of talent to focus on the introduction and cooperation of man and machine.
Blockchain
Blockchain and crypto currencies have not been the salvation bringer for whom many experts considered them, but the functionality and the system of the blockchain still holds many potentials, which however now need a clear direction. Currently there is an incredible chaos in the blockchain area, which makes it difficult for companies to understand the different concepts and efficiently integrate them into their business models. There are currently no standards, no “plug-and-play” variant that would simplify integration and no concrete applications for crypto currencies.
But this is no reason to write off the technology. In the early days of the Internet, it looked very similar until corresponding standards and technologies were established. By 2019, many experts will be working on creating exactly these standards. But according to my prognosis it will probably take another 3-4 years until the hoped-for revolution will happen.
