9 Tech Trends That Will Make Someone Billions Of Dollars Next Year

Business Insider ^ | December 3, 2013 | Julie Bort

[2ndDivisionVet]

2014 is right around the corner.

Most of us can look into our crystal balls and see that a handful of tech trends which became big in 2013 will probably get bigger next year: cloud computing, big data, the rise of tablets, the Internet of Things.

But market research firm IDC has gone one better by predicting how these trends will unfold next year — and generate billions of dollars.

People and companies will spend $2.1 trillion on technology.

Worldwide IT spending will grow 5% next year to $2.1 trillion, IDC says.

People and companies will buy smartphones and tablets, a market expected to grow by 15% over 2013. Companies will also beef up their data centers with new hardware that works better with mobile devices. They'll need servers, storage, networks, software, and services.

The only thing they won't be buying more of is PCs. Worldwide revenues for PCs will be decline 6% in 2014, IDC predicts.

Countries outside the U.S. and Europe will buy tech like crazy.

People and companies in emerging countries will buy new tech at a blinding rate in 2014.

The four hottest emerging markets, Brazil, Russia, India, And China (often called BRIC), will up their spending by 13%, IDC predicts, with China leading the way....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[DesertRhino]

I get really tired of knowing exactly where to invest, and not having a half million laying around.

[Vince Ferrer]

Cloud computing and big data would have been big, until it was revealed that the NSA was spying on all internet traffic. This has cut into the foreign cales of IBM and Cicso already, and will continue until trust can be restored.

[Rca2000]

“cloud computing” is pretty much just a “rehash” of the “old days” where one big computer connected with a bunch of ‘dumb terminals’, other than the fact that those terminals are now “smart”, full-fledged computers...still the “master computer” stores everything the “hosts” have—right??

[meadsjn]

... bigger next year: cloud computing, big data, the rise of tablets, the Internet of Things.

... market research firm IDC

There is no grand idea that marketing can't turn into a worstest nightmare ever.

[Vince Ferrer]

Pretty much. Everything in computers gets invented several times. A cloud is about the same as a mainframe in the 1960s. The biggest difference is that the terminals are now able to connect to many clouds.

[dalereed]

Why would anyone trust a cloud?

Everything I have is going to stay within the confines of my computer!

[Democrat_media]

maybe something that will allow you to surf on the internet privately without the government spying on you

[AlexW]

Technology is growing exponentially. Look at mobile phones alone. I remember when, about 20-25 years ago, I shut down my old VHF mobile telephone system and became a cellular agent.
It was such a big deal...A phone in a bag, and an antenna on the car roof. It was also exclusive. One had to be subjected to a credit check just to be connected.

Today, every poor kid around me has one or two pocket phones that take excellent photographs in addition to texting and making calls. Between my wife and I, we have 3-4 of them. Our 3 yr old boy plays games on one, only when his I-pad is charging. We get instant text from anywhere in the world, and to think, we live in a third world country.

Dwarfing mobile communications is the internet. Just look at how it has progressed and changed the world over the last 25 years. For me it opened the entire world, and has influenced my life beyond my imagination. If not for the internet, I would probably still be in Tennessee, dreaming of that once in a lifetime Caribbean cruise.

Just imagine life when all of this will be on a chip, glued in under one’s scalp....Beam me up Scotty !

[Moose Burger]

Excepting that “a big computer” is now “a bunch of big computers collaborating somehow”, yes

[Eska]

Funny thing, I've never owned a cell phone; we live in rural Alaska, no cell coverage. When I go into Fairbanks and see everybody in Wally World talking away, it seems nutty to me. Ya, it has worked it's way down to the White Trash for sure, ha ha.

Last year they were going to put a dish in our community that would have cell coverage about 20 miles up and down the Yukon. Then one of the Greenies got to thinking that cell phones caused cancer and stopped the whole deal, now no cell phones. Actually, I'm somewhat glad. No cellphones, no cops,no organized local govt, no ordinances, no crime, no taxes;;; life is good.

[max americana]

“Everything I have is going to stay within the confines of my computer!”

Amen to that bro. We don’t care if we have dozens of hard drives around and spend on it. Nothing goes on the cloud.

[dr_lew]

Technology is growing exponentially.

The trend that I see is the internet going south. It's the ads, for starters, and Google too ... commercialism. It's becoming just like TV. You can't move a muscle without getting buried in ads.

[nathanbedford]

When it comes to our fiscal trajectory there are the Cassandras and the Pollyannas.

I proudly claim a place in the first class because I believe that the trajectory of the American government budget is out of control and heading inevitably for a calamity. I believe there is no political will either in the Democrats who control about three quarters of the government (including the bureaucracies) or the Republicans who control the remnant that's left, to pay the price necessary to reduce spending by about one quarter. Worse, there is no inclination to even publicly discuss the looming calamity presented by about $100 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. Witness the television interview of Paul Krugman among the videos who dismisses fears over the debt.

Private as opposed public liabilities are nearly as bad with underwater mortgages and graduates drowning in tuition debt. There is very little elasticity here to compensate for government profligacy.

We Cassandras look look to the Japanese model of grinding decades long recession with no real recovery as the likely future for the United States.

Finally, we pessimists see the nature of the electorate as one that consistently takes the wrong lessons from history. Hence Nathan Bedford's second Maxim: failed socialism begets not reform but more socialism. So it is unlikely that either before, during, or after a crash that the people will take the steps for real reform. Evidence in support of that pessimism is the cynicism of Obama's response to the Great Recession only to be rewarded with his reelection.

The Pollyannas on the other hand, at least those who dwell with their heads out of the sand who will acknowledge that there is a threat, rely on the third great revolution after agriculture and industry, the digital revolution, to float all boats and so change the world's economic paradigm. In other words, we will invent our way out of this hole. Those who live with their heads in the sand will be preaching wealth redistribution and every setback Japan style which the economy suffers will be cited as justification for more socialism. Every advance whether physical or in lifestyle which might be generated by revolutionary technology will likewise be cited as justification for wealth distributional because such revolutionary technology always creates huge winners and the left will not be able to resist the temptation to play the envy card.

I do not pretend to know where the technologies will lead us. My father was born in 1913 and lived a lifestyle as a youth on the farm very similar to Abraham Lincoln yet he lived well into the digital, space, and atomic age which not even Huxley could have predicted.

I do not deny the technology will bring transformations and wonders but I insist that human nature will not change.

[fella]

...A phone in a bag, and an antenna on the car roof

Kind of miss those clunky bag phones. They had plenty of power and could get a signal in places where todays dinky phones won't dream of working. I travel quite a bit on back roads in the Ozarks and if you're not in town or on a main road your not talking nor texting much less internetting.

[Spktyr]

You seem to have not discovered the joys of AdBlock Plus.

[AlexW]

“You can’t move a muscle without getting buried in ads. “
__________________________________________________
Well, I have not been bothered by that so much. It may be your ISP that is the problem.

[There's millions of'em]

My picks for next 36 months (maybe longer): CTIX, DSNY, SPIHf, XXII
Just my opinion…..

[orinoco]

Beware of applications that secretly send your data to an internet server!

[meadsjn]

It is difficult not to be pessimistic about the electorate based on what we've seen since 1992.

You're right about human nature being stubborn to change, and technology isn't what shifts a population mindset. A crisis does -- either a severe economic crisis (Great Depression, Crash of 1873), or a geo-political crisis (i.e. WW-II, Civil War, Revolutionary War) - and the economic and geo-political crises usually come in pairs, coinciding with a two-decade generational shift in mindset.

Our current Crisis Era should run roughly from 2005-2025. It is a civilizational fork-in-the road, and the Millenials will decide whether civilization goes in a positive direction, or into a New Dark Age.