The Virtual Reality (VR) market is expected to grow in 2020, passing US$4.6 billion despite some negative impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. The location-based VR segment has been hit the hardest, with closures (both temporary and permanent) and reduced foot traffic – the pandemic also engendered some supply chain issues and in-demand devices, like the Oculus Quest, have faced stockouts.

Globally the Consumer Electronics (CE) market increased in value during 2019, adding just over $3 billion to present a worldwide total of $683 billion in trade value. Shipments across CE product categories totalled almost 4.4 billion units worldwide, representing a growth of 2.7% year-on-year.

The Internet of Things (IoT) gateways are becoming an increasingly important link in the IoT security and device authentication value chain and emerging as a crucial conduit for intelligent operations across the entire IoT. The new wave of next-generation smart IoT gateways has arrived at an opportune time, enabling a breadth of novel security, intelligence, and authentication operations at the edge

The sudden shock from the COVID-19 pandemic means that conserving cash and containing costs are urgent priorities, now and for the near term at the very least. For industrial companies, this means cutting back on crucial areas of Research & Development (R&D) and Capital Expenditures (Capex).

After years of dominance, traditional radio has reached a turning point in 2020. Powered by strong usage and desirability among key car-buying groups in China, and increasing usage among key groups in the West, streaming media has continued its march onto the dashboard.The COVID-19 pandemic and its related lockdowns have also severely curtailed regular commuting journeys, where much of consumers’ radio-listening originates.

Policymakers should focus on five critical success factors in order to ensure the US continues to build its emerging 5G economy, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG). BCG’s study draws on an in-depth analysis of the factors that secured America’s leadership of the 4G economy.

Interest in Long-Term Evolution (LTE) continues to grow, as the issue of internet access equity has been further highlighted by the move to distance learning. In the near-term, school districts utilising Chromebooks or Windows Notebooks have looked to bridge the connectivity gap by deploying mobile dongles, or by utilising mobile hot spots (MiFi).

The Global Sourcing industry is suffering from the negative business impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The worldwide setup of Global Business Services (GBS) centers, also known as Global In-house Centers (GICs), fell more than 48% as offshore/nearshore activity dropped 46%, and onshore setups dropped 52% for the quarter.

Global robotic process automation (RPA) software revenue is projected to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 19.5% from 2020, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. Despite economic pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the RPA market is still expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2024.

Strategy Analytics forecasts that sales of eSIMs for IoT applications will grow to 326 million by 2025, according to a new Strategy Analytics IoT Strategies report “How will eSIM Impact the Future of IoT and what are the Implications for Stakeholders?”

Over the next five years, an exponential rise in digital interactions between buyers and suppliers will break traditional sales models, according to Gartner, Inc. In fact, Gartner’s research shows that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.

COVID-19 initially slowed mobile phone sales in the Asia Pacific and disrupted supply chains and demand for certain 5G-related end verticals. However, it also caused an increase in broadband traffic and 5G use cases such as South Korea using 5G to live-stream its 2020 elections and China deploying 5G-powered smart city robots.

By 2023, 65% of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under modern privacy regulations, up from 10% in 2020, according to Gartner, Inc. While some organizations focused on cost optimization during the global COVID-19 pandemic, it is paramount that they incorporate the demands of a rapidly evolving privacy landscape into their business’s data strategy.

The evolving threat landscape was ranked as the top driver impacting the information security organization during the next three to five years, according to a recent survey by Gartner. “External risk is top of mind for security and risk management leaders in 2020, yet COVID-19 has proved how rapidly and how drastically such risks can change,” said Jonathan Care, senior research director at Gartner.

The EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) market rose in value 11.1% year on year to $320.9 million in the second quarter of 2020, according to International Data Corporation's (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker.

The value of data is increasing, and that value is stimulating the Internet of Things (IoT) Advanced Analytics Market, with the emergence of accessible out-of-the-box and off-the-shelf machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.Vendors are now easing access to ML and AI toolsets by expanding availability through deployment options that include the edge, on-premises, cloud, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research, finds that the IoT ML and AI market will reach US$1.09 billion in 2020 and grow to US$10.6 billion in 2026.

Organizations today are embracing various technology innovations and redefining the way in which resources work, collaborate and exchange information in a connected world. Enterprise Portals offer a single interface access to a wide range of enterprise data to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portals. Enterprise portals are also known as corporate or business portals.

Customer service and support leaders must scrutinize all technology investments for their ability to deliver on customer experience (CX) goals, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner identified 33 must-watch technologies on the Hype Cycle for Customer Service and Support Technologies, 2020.

According to Forrester, consumers no longer need to trade off price, convenience, and emotional experience when making buying decisions. They expect new products, services, and delivery models to cater to all attributes at once. As a result, the future of B2C buying is not a shift from traditional to digital or an abandonment of self-service in favor of delivery; it is all the above.

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker, the total security appliance market delivered solid unit shipment and revenue growth in the second quarter of 2020. Worldwide revenue increased 7.5% year over year in 2Q20 to $4.2 billion. Unit shipments experienced similar growth, increasing 8.0% year over year.