Gaze into the 2022 to 2028 technology crystal ball

In the area of connectivity, wireless technologies and next-generation wireless devices will require breakthrough innovations to deliver significantly reduced size, weight, power and cost:   

• Consumers are unwilling to accept increases in cost or size of wireless devices and demand even greater battery life. Meeting these demands requires a multi-faceted approach, including advanced packaging technologies capable of interconnecting hundreds of mmWave components while extracting unwanted heat, as well as breakthrough approaches in microcircuit fabrication.
• In 2022, the wide-scale rollout of 5G will supercharge DX. Deployments, device certifications and network rollouts will continue to scale, and as open radio access networks (O-RAN) mature, 5G deployments at scale will follow. The focus will be on new industrial IoT devices with improved latency and reliability. 5G coverage in rural locations will remain limited, and 5G-assisted autonomous cars (level 4) will not come to fruition in 2022. Also, 5G will enable the next stage of ubiquitous computing by distributing intelligence where it is needed and improving efficiencies of every process through better control and reduction of waste.  
• Ongoing investment in 3GPP’s releases 16 and17, and beyond, will focus on new capabilities such as reducing latency, improving reliability and positioning, which will facilitate new use cases in vehicular, industrial networks and factory automation.
• By 2028, the first commercial 6G networks will go live, paving the way for the convergence of the physical, digital and human worlds through applications, computing and communications. This will finally create the internet of everything (IoE).

Another DX hotbed is digital twin technology and how it will forever change how we design, build and deliver products:  

• As organizations strive to advance digital transformation, they will recognize the limitations of virtual systems and increasingly adopt digital twins. For example, in emerging industries like autonomous vehicles, manufacturers have no room for error, and with a digital twin, they can simulate every permutation and continuously refine the design.
• Unlike a virtual model, digital twin updates in real-time with performance, maintenance, and health data from the physical systems, improving decision-making. To keep up with the pace of digital transformation, businesses will use digital twins as an essential part of product design.

AI/ML and cloudification technologies will increasingly transform future networks for improved mobility, and also revolutionize automated testing and analytics:  

• In analytics, it is far more efficient to move the algorithm to the data rather than move terabytes of data into the cloud, so expect to see some advances that will help gain insight faster on data in movement.
• In 2022, code compliance will no longer determine if software can be released. This is especially true of the increasing number of systems that use so-called AI technology and not all responses are deterministic—requiring “AI to test AI”. Intelligent test automation will be vital to ensure that our complex connected world performs exactly as needed.

In the IoT arena,as connected devices become ubiquitous across industries; the key will be to deliver personalized subscription services to leverage the rich data on tap:

• In 2022, intelligent technologies will allow organizations to treat customers as a segment of one and roll out hyper-personalized services, such as a smart fridge being connected to e-commerce and related home-delivery services to keep the household stocked with frequently-needed supplies.
• By 2025, these types of personalized services will have grown rapidly and over 50% of households in the US will have a least one subscription.
• As the on-demand economy continues to expand, IoT-driven subscription models will expand into business and consumer markets. The connected infrastructure will advise when repairs or replacements need to happen as predictive maintenance becomes the norm by 2024 to optimize the availability of these services.
• The move to subscription-based services aligns with a world where people may no longer need to own a car. By 2025, consumers will shift to a rent-a-service model enabling them to go wherever and whenever they like. With autonomous vehicles users can optimize their itineraries to maximize the predicted utilization. This ensures that everyone who wants a car gets one when they need it, using the minimum number of vehicles by analyzing live and historical data to fuel predictive analytics.
• By 2024, robots will be widely deployed both in-store and in warehouses/fulfillment centers, further shrinking the number of human jobs in the retail industry. Then, IoT automation will allow supermarkets to deliver directly from the warehouse to the customer, eliminating the need for physical stores.
• By 2025, drone delivery will become the norm to meet the demands of younger consumers and to help accelerate the delivery of goods. Before the end of this decade, there will be no checkout or cashiers in any retail store.
• In healthcare, in the same way IoT started to move analytics to the edge, IoT and connected monitoring devices will empower individuals to self-perform a range of diagnostics in their own home and in their own time. This trend will expand into new markets, delivering a range of autonomous, preliminary diagnosis solutions in most homes by 2024.

Sustainability/ESG trends

As organizations look to mitigate their ESG risks, they will prioritize sustainable supply chains. The sustainable supply chain will incorporate:

• Reducing the carbon footprint in shipment and logistics planning and having carbon accounting platforms across systems to monitor emissions data
• Creating a circular supply chain (reduce, reuse, recycle and remanufacture) to minimize waste that impacts the environment and to reduce the cost of raw materials
• Supply chain integrity, where ethics and compliance will be increasingly important, spanning fair and legal labor practices through to responsible sourcing
• Climate-smart supply chain planning, where environmental changes affecting the availability and potential disruptions of materials are always factored-in

Finally, the push to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require a wave of new technologies to be deployed. However, this plan fails to tackle the existing carbon in the atmosphere.

To redress the balance, there will need to be a form of carbon sequestration or capture on an industrial scale before the end of the decade.