Tech industries ready to grow in the 2020s

The Roaring Twenties have arrived, and with it, the limits of technological innovation are constantly being pushed back as if there was no tomorrow. Like its 20th century cousin, the 2020s will be a period of rapid growth in emerging markets, except that this time we traded combustion engines and petroleum for microchips and an ultra-fast Internet connection.

Today we take out our crystal ball (Wi-Fi enabled of course) and try to predict which tech industries will be the biggest winners in the next decade.

Artificial intelligence

AI is already on our doorstep, but many industry experts say things will take off in the 2020s. They argue that it will be a decade of tremendous change as technology and humanity become more in addition related.

AI will continue to penetrate the business and financial world. Robotic process automation should carry much of the burden of the more subordinate but essential administrative roles in business today. As the software grows and the volume of data increases, we can expect these automated systems to improve and adapt over time. IDC estimates that by 2025, 75% of businesses will retrain their staff to fill the gaps left by new AI technology.

But AI will affect us more personally over the next decade. More and more mobile phone companies are using AI at an increasing rate. Only 3% of phones sold in 2018 harbored some form of artificial intelligence. By 2020, this figure is expected to reach up to 35% of devices. Companies like Apple, Huawei and Samsung leads the way in this regard.

Virtual reality

This technology has been somewhat slow, since it was born in the 1980s. As exciting as the concept of virtual reality may seem, it never really entered the mainstream until the purchase of Oculus by Facebook in 2014. The company released a series of headsets including the popular Oculus Go. Since then, other companies have advanced rapidly in their research and development of virtual reality and at the dawn of the 2020s, this should not change.

These trends will only continue when virtual reality and entertainment are increasingly linked. Currently, the most popular use of technology is in the gaming world and this shows no signs of change. Epic Games, the editor of the global phenomenon Fortnite has invested a lot in virtual reality.

And they are not alone. We can expect more and more companies to take advantage of the immersive nature of technology. VR can take us to a whole other place, which is why it is so effective in online games. We saw companies like Microgaming start to grow VR games to use on online casino sites. We can see this trend continue as we move into the new decade.

But virtual reality will start to see more use in other areas. A recent VR Intelligence report found that enterprise product development is progressing faster than for consumers. This means that we can expect VR and AR products to enter the workplace in this decade like never before. We are already seeing the beginning of this: headsets such as Google Glass Enterprise Edition are not intended for consumers and are rather used in sectors such as engineering and design.

Food production

It is becoming more difficult to feed a rapidly growing world population. This will only become more difficult as the world moves to more renewable forms of energy and food production. This is an area that will experience considerable growth over the next decade as the market searches for innovative solutions to problems.

We can expect huge growth in agriculture. Hydroponic and vertical farming are trends that are already taking root in some parts of the world. This will only increase as new technologies and research can make the process more efficient and more profitable. The hydroponics market alone is expected to double between 2019 and 2025 according to a report with the Asia-Pacific region which is expected to experience the fastest growth.

Another part of this will be the growth of the artificial protein sector. Companies like Quorn have grown rapidly in recent years and this shows no signs of stopping as more and more people go on a plant-based diet.

New generation proteins are needed to feed a population of nearly 10 billion and have received five times the investment from the previous year, reaching more than $ 200 million, according to research group Lux which has examined some of the meta – technological trends that define the next decade. This promises to be a decade of tremendous change and advancement as technology becomes more and more closely linked to our daily lives.

Last update on April 1, 2020