According to a study carried out by the International Data Corporation (IDC), emerging technologies such as robotics, virtual reality and IoT will rise globally in the information and communications industry to US$5.5trillion by 2020.
The IDC illustrates that ICT is dependent on new technology, with traditional business technology revenues in decline as cloud-based computing solutions rise.
The study shows that new technologies known as ‘Innovation Accelerators’ will provide up to US$7.4trillion in the aggregate industry revenue by 2020, with US$1.8trillion annual sales being added to the overall size of the industry by the end of its forecasted period.
The annual revenue of IoT is forecasted to reach US$1.3trillion by 2020, although security, virtual reality, cognitive systems and 3D printing will also add to the growth of the ICT market.
‘Big data is at the heart of the fastest-growing opportunities’
Vice President at IDC, Stephen Minton, said to Cloud Tech: “The traditional ICT market of data centre infrastructure, client devices, software, services, and telecommunications is now growing at a rate not much faster than real gross domestic products (GDP), and increasingly resembles a mature sector of the overall economy.
“Device sales are now dominated by mobile devices and cloud service providers represent a growing proportion of all infrastructure hardware and software sales, while big data and analytics are at the heart of the fastest growing opportunities. Meanwhile, growth in the telecom market is already entirely dependent on mobile.”
Asia-Pacific is forecasted to reach over US$600 billion by 2020, representing the largest market for Innovation Accelerators, followed by the United States, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Written by Leah Alger
