• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 26, 2016

According to the 15th edition of the report entitled Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions by Deloitte, Virtual Reality (VR) will have its first billion dollar year in 2016, with about $700 million in hardware sales, and the remainder from content. Additionally, anyone with a smartphone could try a variant of VR, the majority of VR’s revenues in 2016 will likely be driven by tens of millions of users rather than billions of usersEmmanuel Durou, TMT consulting partner at Deloitte Middle East, says “… while in 2016 virtual reality is expected to reach a billion dollar milestone… in the long term VR is likely to struggle to reach the scale or ubiquity of the smartphone, PC or the television set… “

 “However… we are seeing significant growth potential in cognitive technologies, such as computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning,” continues Durou “… this year 80 of the top 100 enterprise software companies are expected to be using cognitive technologies, unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things… “

In addition to the predictions on virtual reality, trailing millennials (those 18-24 years old) are anticipated to be the most pro-PC of all age groups of 2016, a 25% increase from 2015. Over 85% of trailing millennials, in 13 developed world countries, had access to a laptop in 2015, according to the research

Additional findings from Deloitte Global’s 2016 TMT predictions include:

Technology

• By the end of 2016, fewer than 25% of information technology (IT) jobs in developed countries are expected to be held by women, about the same as 2015, and may even be down, says the report
• The number of individuals who use a third party touch-based payment service to make a purchase on their mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) is likely to increase by 150% to reach 50 million regular users in 2016
• While the total value of the graphene(100 times stronger than strongest steel; conducts heat and electricity efficiently: Wikipedia) materials market in 2016 is likely to be in the low tens of millions of dollars, research and development spending for the year is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In the medium-term, graphene may be incorporated into products worth many billions of dollars of value per year

Media

• Only 0.3% of all mobile device owners are expected to use an ad-blocker by the end of 2016. This is likely to place less than $100 million (0.1%) of the $70 billion mobile advertising (smartphones and tablets) market at risk
• In 2016, mobile (smartphone and tablet) will likely become the leading games platform by software revenue, expected to generate US $35 billion in revenue, up 20% from 2015. This compares to expected revenues of $32 billion for PC games and $28 billion for console games, says the report.
• eSports will likely generate global revenues of $500 million in 2016, up 25% from about $400 million in 2015, and will likely have an audience of regular and occasional viewers of close to 150 million people, only a fraction of league revenues in major sports, ranging from $4 billion up to $30 billion
• In 2016 the value of movie theatre admissions in the US and Canada are expected to fall by about 3% to about $10.6 billion, with about 1.3 billion tickets sold.
• In 2016 the US traditional television market, the world’s largest at about $170 billion in 2016, is expected to see erosion on the number of pay-TV subscribers; pay-TV penetration as a percent of total population; average pay-TV monthly bill; consumers switching to antennas for watching TV; and live and time-shifted viewing by the overall population, especially by trailing millennials

Telecommunications

• The number of Gigabit per second (Gbit/s) Internet connections is expected to surge to ten million by year-end, a tenfold increase, of which about 70% will likely be residential connections. It’s anticipated, says the report, that about 600 million subscribers may be on networks that offer a Gigabit tariff as of 2020, the majority of connected homes in the world
• In 2016 consumers are expected to sell outright, or trade-in, approximately 120 million used smartphones, generating more than US $17 billion for their owners, a marked increase from the 80 million smartphones traded in 2015 with a value of $11 billion. 10% of premium smartphones (US $500 or higher) purchased new in 2016 will likely end up having three or more owners before being retired, says the report
• In 2016, 2.5 trillion photos are expected to be shared or stored online, a 15% increase on the prior year. Over 90% of these photos will likely have been taken by a smartphone; digital SLRs, compact cameras, tablets and laptops are estimated to collectively contribute the remainder.
• About 26% of smartphone users in developed markets are expected to not make any traditional phone calls in a given week in 2016, but are rather substituting traditional voice calls for a combination of messaging including SMS, voice and video services delivered ‘over the top’
• 100 mobile operators worldwide will likely be offering at least one packet-based (Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and / or Voice over LTE (VoLTE)) voice service at the end of 2016, double the amount year-on-year, and six times higher than at the beginning of 2015. 
• Approximately 300 million customers will be using these services, double the number at the start of the year and five times higher than at the beginning of 2015, concludes the report.

More information available through the TradeArabia News Service.