Worldwide spending on Telecom Services and Pay TV Services reached $1,478 billion in 2022, increasing by 2.2% year over year. IDC expects Worldwide spending on Telecom and Pay TV services will increase by 2.0% next year and reach a total of $1,541 billion. The latest forecast is slightly more optimistic compared to last year, as it assumes a 0.3 percentage point higher growth in 2023. IDC believes this acceleration is a consequence of the increase in tariffs on telecommunication services fueled by inflation.

Omdia’s latest research reveals that NB-IoT and LoRa will account for 87% of all LPWAN connections in 2028, strengthening their position in the LPWAN market with over 85% of the connections worldwide. Both technologies are in the sweet spot for mid-range IoT applications that are popular now. With sufficient differentiation between the two technologies, both are on track for success through the end of Omdia’s forecast in 2028.

In a surprising development, General Motors (GM) has announced that it will eliminate Android Auto and CarPlay from its upcoming electric vehicles (EVs) from mid-year 2024. In its stead, GM envisions a built-in, native OS. Needless to say, this development has invited significant criticism from consumers.

Financial technology revenues are projected to grow sixfold from $245 billion to $1.5 trillion by 2030, according to a new report released today by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and QED Investors. The fintech sector, which currently holds a 2% share of the $12.5 trillion in global financial services revenue, is estimated to grow up to 7%, of which banking fintechs are expected to constitute almost 25% of all banking valuations worldwide by 2030.

Industrial and Manufacturing firms face a myriad of ever-changing challenges, from rising interest rates, pressure to relocate facilities, and increased scrutiny of their operations through an ESG lens. Technology suppliers must help firms evaluate outside signals and add agility to their operations to meet customer needs.

New research from Parks Associates shows that 80-85 million US consumers ages 18 and older report they listen to a podcast for at least one hour each week. The research study, Podcasting: An Exploding Market, examines the impact of the rapid growth in the podcast market, including household audio equipment adoption, consumer behaviors across various platforms and genres, and crossover effects with the consumption of music services.

Businesses’ global investments in engineering, and on research and development in the engineering (ER&D) sector, are set to rise strongly over the next five years, expanding at a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% up to 2026 despite currently uncertain economic conditions, Bain & Company’s latest research reveals.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 55.2 million units in the first quarter of 2023, a 30% decrease from the first quarter of 2022, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. An unfavorable combination of oversupply and continued low PC demand due to economic uncertainties and a lack of purchase motivation led to the second consecutive quarter of historic year-over-year decline.

Despite a slowdown caused by macroeconomic and geopolitical forces in the second half of the year, 2022 was still the second-best year on record for healthcare dealmaking due in large part to the white-hot pace of investment at the start of the year. Total disclosed deal value reached nearly $90 billion, down from $151 billion in 2021 but still over $10 billion more than the next-closest year.

The fundamental drivers of superior performance and sustainable competitive advantage are changing. Growth opportunities are moving to new markets, including those created by technology disruption, and are expanding in areas related to generative artificial intelligence (AI), the energy transition and low-emission technology as well as in gene therapy, the metaverse, and quantum computing.

Global consumer spending on games is set to reach $215 billion by 2027. The transmedia space continues to expand and profit as more video game franchises make their way to large and small screens. Streaming services need more content to monetize their services and reach profitability as consumers demand more and more content. The days of poor-performing titles are long behind us. High-scoring TV series such as Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ or HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ prove that quality, investment, and writing across the adaptations are of a superior level.

68% of marketing leaders believe collecting first-party customer data with an appropriate balance of customer value exchange and privacy will become more challenging in 2023, according to a recent Gartner survey. The survey revealed that 85% of respondents had implemented a formal policy to manage customer data, yet privacy remains an ongoing challenge.

The ballooning cost of living has been a well-publicized global issue. Audiences are continuing to tighten their belts in response to the crisis. Recent research from Futuresource Consulting shows key European markets like France, Germany, and the UK have been hit especially hard, with over 50% of consumers financially worse off than they were six months ago.

A new consumer study finds younger households are at higher risk for canceling their professionally monitored security, even as plans to cancel have dropped among all households. The research firm reports that 38% of Gen Z home security monitoring subscribers intend to cancel their contract, while overall, only 17% of those with pro-monitoring report a likelihood to cancel.

Global shipments of wearable devices declined 18.9% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2022 (4Q22) to 138.7 million units, according to new data. Shipments for the full year 2022 were down 7.7% compared to 2021, marking the first year of decline for the category due to challenging macroeconomic conditions and difficult comparisons to the strong results of 2021.

Improved safety requirements across industries will drive the non-destructive testing (NDT) equipment market, inflating the demand for integrated software, according to Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis of the global NDT software industry.

The workload driving the largest share of enterprise IT infrastructure spending in the first half of 2022 (1H22) was Structured Databases/Data Management, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Workloads.

Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. This is higher than the 18.8% growth forecast for 2022.

As TinyML vendors continue to democratize Machine Learning (ML) at a rapid pace, global technology intelligence firm ABI Research forecasts that TinyML Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revenue will exceed US$220 million in 2022 and become an important component from 2025 onward.

As enterprises apply their best creative and strategic thinking to how to take advantage of the metaverse, they should also address the heightened risks the metaverse will pose to employees, customers and corporate assets, according to Everest Group.