The deployment of smart vending technologies will surge in the Asia-Pacific as high-tech unmanned retail continues to attract major investment, ABI Research forecasts. The demand for technology-driven frictionless retail experiences, combined with cheap production costs and limited data privacy barriers, is driving rapid adoption in China, Japan, and South Korea, leaving the rest of the world behind.

Multiple factors are accelerating automated vehicle technology development, including improving safety (ideally to the goal of zero fatalities), eliminating congestion, reducing pollution and creating a socially equitable mobility model. These goals are not unique to Japan; such a vision is shared around the world.

Most organizations are undergoing a digital transformation that directly impacts how they do business, yet 70 percent of employees have not mastered the skills they need for their jobs today, and 80 percent of employees do not have the skills needed for their current and future roles, according to Gartner, Inc.

The front door is a front-and-center opportunity for smart home device companies according to a new report by Strategy Analytics . According to the report, “ Smart Home Access Control: Predictions, Players, and Products ”, sales of nearly 26 million units in 2023 will push the smart lock market size past $2.4 billion.

Smartwatches are expected to see significant increases in demand, growing 47 percent in volume terms during the first half of 2018, according to the latest Worldwide Wearables report from Futuresource Consulting.

A recent report by Juniper Research found that over 33 billion records will be stolen by cybercriminals in 2023 alone, an increase of 175 percent over the 12 billion records expected to be compromised in 2018. This will result in a cumulative loss of over 146 billion records for the whole period.

A new IDC survey reveals that cloud service demand due to Digital Transformation is changing the delivery of business-oriented solutions, with service providers ramping up their investments in new offerings to cater for their client's requirements not just for new infrastructure, but also applications, and managed and professional services delivered via cloud services. The survey finds that as a result, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) services providers are rapidly exiting their traditional business models.

Given that a consumer's technology experience is highly predictive of their future technology desire and brand loyalty, automakers should carefully examine the user experience and provide customers with useful, reliable and valuable features. As always, the consumer will remain the ultimate judge for determining the value of technology and what should be incorporated into their next vehicle.

J.D. Power has launched a new website to give consumers better tools to assess vehicle quality and remove stress from the vehicle-buying experience, according to Troy Snyder, Vice President of J.D. Power's Consumer Division, in a recent podcast interview for journalists.

Eighty-two percent of mobile operators participating in a 5G study conducted by business information provider IHS Markit are busy trialing and testing the technology, mainly in North America and Asia, with 12 percent -- all from North America -- planning commercial 5G rollouts by year’s end.

So-called "UnTelco" opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs) in the smart home will reach $11.2 billion by 2022, though it will not be an easy journey, according to ABI Research. 

Speech recognition will reach the Plateau of Productivity within the next two years and six other technologies will reach mainstream business adoption in the next two to five years according to the 2018 Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for the digital workplace.

Strategy Analytics forecasts that global consumer and advertising spend on TV and video will grow from $490 billion in 2017 to $559 billion in 2022 -- an increase of $69 billion. Spend on over-the-top (OTT) video will account for 90 percent of this growth, according to Strategy Analytics’ Television & Media Strategies (TMS) report, “TV’s Transformation: A Unified TV and Video Market Perspective.”

A new update to the Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions will reach $260 billion in 2022 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.9 percent over the 2017-2022 forecast period. BDA revenues are expected to total $166 billion this year, an increase of 11.7 percent over 2017.

Cloud computing ranks as the top risk concern for executives in risk, audit, finance and compliance, according to the latest survey by Gartner, Inc. While cloud computing presents organizations with novel opportunities, several new risks — including cybersecurity disclosure and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance — make cloud solutions susceptible to unexpected security threats.

Sony has sold over three million Playstation VR (PSVR) headsets to date, making it the clear market leader in the premium/standalone VR platform sector over its HTC Vive and Oculus Rift competitors. These numbers are exactly in line with the hardware sales forecasts in Digi-Capital’s AR/VR/XR Analytics Platform.

Worldwide volume demand for dedicated consumer video devices, such as action cameras, remained resilient in 2017, according to Futuresource Consulting's new “Dedicated Consumer Video Device Market Report”. The report details how the demand for action cameras continues to be driven by sports enthusiasts, and more increasingly, casual users.

Service providers are investing in their data centers (DCs) to improve scalability, deploy applications rapidly, enable automation, and harden security, according to the Data Center Strategies and Leadership Global Service Provider Survey from IHS Markit.

New video research from Parks Associates today reveals that approximately 20 percent of U.S. broadband households are highly sensitive to collection and use of information about themselves and their activities.

Twenty-nine percent of employees observed at least one compliance violation at work in 2016 or 2017, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. The survey, which sampled more than 5,000 employees at all levels, found that these workers are twice as likely to leave their organization.