The market for virtual assistants (VAs) shows strong positive momentum, driven forward by a combination of rising consumer demand and improvements in the enabling technologies. According to a new report from Futuresource Consulting, global shipments will exceed 2.3 billion units by 2023, up from a projected 1.1 billion for 2019, with a CAGR of 20% over the reporting period.

International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new assessment profiling ten providers of managed cloud services worldwide. The IDC MarketScape report uses a comprehensive framework to assess the vendors relative to a set of criteria that explain success in the managed cloud services market and highlights the factors expected to be the most influential for success in both the short term and the long term. A significant component of this evaluation are the perceptions of buyers surveyed by IDC of both the key characteristics and the capabilities of these providers.

While the jury is out on what percentage of large digital transformation initiatives are successful, projects that focus on digitizing and improving specific operations have a proven track record of delivering tangible cost and efficiency benefits in 90-, 60- and even 30-day timeframes, according to Mike Rossi, Senior Vice President for Menlo Park, Calif.-based Vitria.

the number of people using government-issued digital identity credentials will grow by over 150% from an expected 1.7 billion in 2019 to over 5 billion in 2024, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Emerging economies in Asia and Africa are some of the biggest markets, as countries leapfrog analogue identities to benefit from the efficiencies digital registration and management bring.

Worldwide TV shipments are riding high, ending 2018 with the strongest growth rate this decade, with value up by 6%, according to a new market report from Futuresource Consulting.

By 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform, with only 5% ever considered for repatriation to on-premises, according to Gartner, Inc. This trend will largely be due to databases used for analytics, and the software-as a-service (SaaS) model.

Openness comes to most proprietary technologies, because it is a time honored way of bringing down pricing in any given market. Whether Open RAN concepts emerge in the next 12 months or over the next four years, it will have the same effect, according to a report from Rethink Research.

Rising from negligible levels this year, the global market for microLED displays is expected to grow to 15.5 million units in 2026 as steep declines in manufacturing costs make the emerging technology suitable for the mass market, according to  IHS Markit’s Micro LED Display Technology & Market report.

Three-quarters of organizations surveyed by Gartner, Inc. increased customer experience (CX) technology investments in 2018. Customer analytics continues to be one of the biggest investments, with 52% intending to increase funding in 2019, focusing on customer journey analysis, customer needs analysis, voice of the customer (VoC) and digital marketing.

Enterprises are expanding their use of multi-cloud to support their organizations’ increasing need for varied cloud-based applications and IT infrastructure.

The dynamism of the subscription video sector has showed no sign of slowing in the first half 2019; with a high sense of anticipation for what is to come during the remainder of the year. Most of the current focus has centred around the potential Netflix dampening services which have yet to launch; namely Disney+, WarnerMedia and Apple TV+.

The industrial Ethernet market is predicted to hike from $25 billion in 2018 to around  $70 billion by 2025, according to a 2019 Global Market Insights, Inc. report. The rapidly growing adoption of Industrial IoT (IIoT) predominantly among the manufacturing and automotive sectors to improve the efficiency of production processes and supply chain is driving the growth of the market. Supportive government initiatives and hefty investments to extensively convert traditional grids into smart grids are resulting in the proliferation of the market.

Microsoft in 2018 became the market share leader for total off-premises cloud service revenue with 13.8 percent share, bumping Amazon to the #2 spot with 13.2 percent; IBM was #3 with 8.8 percent revenue share, according to IHS Markit. Microsoft’s success can be attributed to its comprehensive portfolio and the growth it is experiencing from its more advanced PaaS and CaaS offerings.

Worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) is forecast to reach $160 billion in 2023, up significantly from the $16.8 billion forecast for 2019. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide, the five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for AR/VR spending will be 78.3 percent.

Users’ trust in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions is plummeting as incidents of irresponsible privacy breaches and data misuse keep occurring. Despite rising regulatory scrutiny to combat these breaches, Gartner Inc. predicts that, by 2023, 75 percent of large organizations will hire AI behavior forensics, privacy and customer trust specialists to reduce brand and reputation risk.

The continuous rise in the number of connected and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, connected and autonomous cars, content streaming, and multiplayer games will accelerate the edge computing market at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.3 percent from 2017 to 2022, Frost & Sullivan says.

Despite the imminent danger from a fast- evolving cyber threat horizon, ABI Research finds that cybersecurity investment within the industrial control systems (ICS) market is severely lagging. Indeed, the consultancy expects investments to barely cross the $2 billion mark by 2025.

Modern marketing has changed dramatically in the last few years as marketing technologies (martech) enable organizations to better know and understand their customers' journey by utilizing advanced analytics.

Opportunities for businesses to improve internal processes and enhance customer experiences through the use of artificial intelligence have been slow to take hold due to confusion about the technology, according to a new report released today by CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global technology industry.

The global number of shipments of BMIs (Brain Machine Interfaces), devices that connect computers to the brain, will reach 25.6 million by 2030, up from an estimated 350,000 in 2019, according to a new report from Juniper Research.