[Technology Report]
Megatrends Of The Future Will Feed Off Industry Hype
Industry analysts see key gains in store for several market sectors, thanks to revolutionary leaps in technology.
InMedica, the medical electronics division of IMS Research, predicts exceptional growth in consumer medical devices. Estimates show manufacturer revenue reaching more than $5 billion by 2011, partly due to the aging population and its inherent chronic medical conditions, in developed countries. Several market analysts expect consumers will be able to log medical readings into a PC or even a smart phone for remote analysis by medical professionals.
Security is another strong market sector, particularly in software and with the transition to more ubiquitous use of biometrics, such as fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition. Growing awareness of the damage caused by security breaches, together with the increasing demand for a more mobile and remote workplace, will keep the worldwide market for security software buoyant, according to Gartner, a market research and consulting firm.
Gartner projects worldwide security software revenue at $1.5 billion in 2008, an 11.2% increase from 2007. The market is forecast to surpass $13.1 billion in 2012. Gartner also says that in the short term, prioritizing selection of security technologies in the current business environment continues to be the top issue for enterprises. That’s because companies and government agencies face greater pressure to demonstrate compliance under various regulatory requirements and show business value and cost-efficiencies for security measures.
On another front, rampant identity theft has pushed the development of biometric techniques to make transactions more secure. RNCOS Research predicts the world biometrics market will jump 6.5 times in 2008 over 2003. An RNCOS report also says the market of biometrics in point-of-sales equipment and services will climb to $440 million by 2010, up from $31 million in 2005.
As a result, Acuity Market Intelligence, another market research organization, says it’s beginning to see an interest in biometric technology development from companies outside the biometric field. Expanding homeland-security budgets are another reason why Acuity sees rapid growth in biometrics.
FIGHTING FOR DOLLARS Don’t worry too much about the military and aerospace markets. They’re still huge. It’s the programs that count. And some of those could change with evolving world conditions and a different administration and Congress in the U.S. beginning early next year.
Also, some military roles may change. While the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps have been expanding their fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the Air Force is being pressed to become more involved in the war in Iraq, including the use of pilotless drones. The number of these aircraft in use by U.S. forces has grown 25-fold since September 11, 2001, to a total of more than 5000.
There’s also a growing opportunity for satellite development, which had slowed significantly during the first half of this decade. According to the Teal Group, a defense and aerospace consulting firm, the emerging cycle within the commercial satellite market will coincide with an up cycle in the military satellite market, led by more than 200 new-generation U.S. military satellites valued at about $120 billion.
Many of these satellites, like so many other U.S. Department of Defense programs, have been delayed and are severely over budget. But Teal says that they will be built and launched because the requirements for them exist.
What won’t change much is the military’s use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and other hardware in systems. This has proven to be a very successful way for the Pentagon to not only cut costs tremendously, but also to get new and emerging technologies into its inventory more rapidly.
PERSONAL ROBOTICS We’re also likely to see more robots in the home, taking over mostly simple but annoying tasks like vacuum cleaning. The Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, a Tokyo-based think tank, believes that robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, helping avert worker shortages as the country’s population shrinks.
Japan faces a 16% dip in its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, according to government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country not used to large-scale immigration. The foundation says robots could fill the gap, ranging from monitoring the health of older people to performing basic household tasks.
Several Japanese companies, like Sony, Hitachi, and NEC through its Personal Robot Research Center, have developed robots that can find and identify people (facial recognition), interact with language (speech recognition), move around independently, and perform autonomous activities (Fig. 3).
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