Ah prediction season again. This year, I thought I'd have a look at what will be stealing oxygen in the tech space next year. Let's see if I get it right.
5G
Expect this to be full on in 2019. There'll be a lot about higher speed, low latency and how it's better. I remember when 3G appeared and the mobile operators couldn't get it together for some time. All those years ago, 3 tried to sell me a clunky phone to watch football on 3G.
How the mobile operators will sell 5G to consumers remains to be seen because the 'it's faster' sell point won't work. Instantaneous communications may do it.
Cybersecurity
This is an 'Always On' issue.
Voice Over
If you have fat thumbs like me, voice over search is a Godsend. Even predictive texting isn't 100 percent perfect. The tech strides made in voice recognition between now and a year ago are astonishing. I've started to experiment more and more with Siri and Google voice searches and been very impressed with the results.
Website Q&A / FAQ sections designed to accommodate voice over and text short and long tail keywords will become a search engine marketing necessity. This will take some time.
Additional Reading: Voice over trend predictions for 2019—and the impact on marketing
Data
5G is going to increase the amount of data produced, modified, shared, analysed, and stored. Rather than data being the new oil or fuelling business, it's going to be more important than that. It's the oxygen that will allow businesses to grow. No doubt.
Trust Erosion
I think we are very close to losing all control over our personal data thanks to legal and illegal collection means.
The trust we have with these public and private organisations to safe-guard sensitive data (bank accounts, medical records, passport and ID numbers, home address, etc.) has been eroded significantly and will continue to be throughout 2019.
We have placed tremendous trust in enterprises to keep our data safe. Yet the collection of user data is routine by companies such as Apple and Google. Pretty much whatever you do on the web, or wherever you visit will see the corresponding data slurped by them both. There are other tech companies at it too but since iOS and Android are the two most popular mobile OS, Apple and Google must have huge data lakes.
Further reading: Google and Apple Track You Everywhere You Go
M&A in IMS
I think we'll see consolidation or acquisitions of identity monitoring services since identity theft is so prevalent.
Further reading: Best Identity monitoring services for 2018
Cognitive Computing
I think artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. will continue to evolve and advance just without the hype.
Bonus: Scare Yourself Constantly
Read this: The Complete Unauthorized Checklist of How Google Tracks You and scroll down to the part about what Google knows about you.