Will we fall in love again with tech in 2020? (JOSEP LAGO)

London (AFP) – In 2020, will the wow factor return to consumer hardware? Will blockchain and 5G punch into the mainstream? Or will the world unify against Big Tech’s tax-avoiding practices?

<p>AFP looks at five themes shaping the world of technology, after a year in which debate intensified over the industry’s exploitation of its customers’ privacy.</p><p></p><p>- 5G’s unfulfilled promise -</p><p></p><p>Super-fast fifth-generation network speeds are meant to revolutionise communications along with areas like urban transport.</p><p>But so far, 5G has failed to meet expectations due to the lagging build of infrastructure in many places. Apple has yet to launch a compatible phone, unlike rivals including Samsung.</p><p>The rollout should quicken next year as more countries install base stations and networking equipment — although US President Donald Trump’s war on Chinese sector leader Huawei remains a wild card.</p><p>As smartphone sales plateau around the world, manufacturers have been focussing more on ancillary services.</p><p>”You have to sell the entire experience, the entire ecosystem,” Dominique Bindels, senior analyst for home and tech with London-based research firm Euromonitor International, told AFP.</p><p>Highlighting Apple’s success in payments and peripheral devices such as AirPods, Bindels predicted that smart earphones, along with speakers and at-home devices connected on the “internet of things”, would be among the more dynamic sectors in 2020.</p><p>Digital assistants such as Alexa and Siri may start talking to each other, after Amazon, Apple and Google this month formed an alliance with other industry players to develop a common standard for smart home devices.</p><p>Another trend could be consolidation in TV streaming, after Apple and Disney joined Netflix, Amazon Video and some national broadcasters in a crowded subscription market.</p><p></p><p>- Leap into the quantum dark -</p><p></p><p>For the industry at large, business consultancy Accenture this year coined the acronym DARQ to denote four major trends: distributed ledger technology (such as blockchain), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality and quantum computing.</p><p>Unbreakable blockchain networks of computers have already been generating virtual currencies in the form of bitcoin and its ilk, bypassing the need for a regulator like a government or central bank. </p><p>Facebook wants to make the tech respectable through its “Libra” project, but has hit political opposition around the world, and several financial partners have pulled out.</p><p>Unwilling to let private enterprise dictate terms, China and other nations are building their own digital payments systems, which could see fruition next year.</p><p>However, blockchain networks devour huge amounts of energy, and concerns will mount about their environmental impact as debate intensifies more broadly about tech’s contribution to climate change.</p><p></p><p>- The price of privacy -</p><p></p><p>Most companies are now actively engaged across the spectrum of another tech acronym, SMAC: social, mobile, analytics and cloud. For consumers, SMAC is felt in how we communicate with friends and how we search and shop.</p><p>That is accentuating fears about privacy, after a series of data leaks at Facebook first laid bare how much of our online lives are exploited by companies and political parties.</p><p>”People are becoming more conscious of sharing data but also in the same moment, the Nest cameras and smart speakers are flying off the shelves,” said Bindels.</p><p>”There’s a huge divide. People have been learning to trade privacy for convenience. It’s just another currency.”</p><p>Amnesty International, in a hard-hitting study last month into Facebook and Google, said that tradeoff amounts to a “Faustian bargain” which imperils our human rights.</p><p></p><p>- Tech wars -</p><p></p><p>To Beijing’s anger, Washington alleges that Huawei and another telecoms group, ZTE, are little more than shell fronts for Chinese spy chiefs.</p><p>Ni Lexiong, professor at the Shanghai National Defense Strategy Institute, said US sanctions depriving those firms of access to US components would only encourage China to stand on its own feet.</p><p>”In the end, once China has formed its own industrial chain in the field of artificial intelligence, the United States will also lose a large market,” he said.</p><p>Samm Sacks, an expert on China’s digital economy at the Washington think tank New America, said the tech standoff could harm progress in areas such as precision medicine and AI-based diagnoses.</p><p>The two countries have cooperated in research, “and severing that could have global consequences”, she warned.</p><p></p><p>- Taxing times -</p><p></p><p>The US presidential election next November will likely prove another flashpoint over disinformation peddled on social media. </p><p>Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren wants Amazon, Facebook and Google to be broken up on anti-trust grounds.</p><p>The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is meanwhile due by June 2020 to present a “unified approach” for richer countries to levy a digital tax on internet giants.</p><p>Some like France have gone ahead with their own tax, igniting another front in Trump’s multifaceted trade wars as the US threatens tariffs on a range of French goods.</p><p>jit-burs/rl/txw</p><p></p>

Disclaimer: Validity of the above story is for 7 Days from original date of publishing. Source: AFP.