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Agence France-Presse

Will the wow factor return to consumer hardware this year? Will blockchain and 5G punch into the mainstream? Or will the world unify against Big Tech’s tax-avoiding practices?
Here are five themes shaping the world of technology, amid the intense debate over the industry’s exploitation of customers’ privacy.
5G’s unfulfilled promise
Super-fast fifth-generation network speeds are meant to revolutionise communications along with areas like urban transport.

But so far, 5G has failed to meet expectations due to the delay in building infrastructure in many places. Apple has yet to launch a compatible phone, unlike rivals including Samsung.
The roll-out should pick up speed this 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.
As smartphone sales plateau around the world, manufacturers have been focusing more on ancillary services. “You have to sell the entire experience, the entire ecosystem,” says Dominique Bindels, senior analyst for home and tech with London-based research firm Euromonitor International.
Bindels predicts that smart earphones, speakers and at-home devices connected on the internet of things will be among the more dynamic sectors this year.
Digital assistants such as Alexa and Siri may start talking to each other, after Amazon, Apple and Google formed an alliance with other industry players in December to develop a common standard for smart home devices.
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.
Leap into the quantum dark
For the industry at large, business consultancy Accenture last year coined the acronym Darq to denote four major trends: distributed ledger technology (such as blockchain), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality and quantum computing.
Unbreakable blockchain networks of computers have already been generating virtual currencies such as bitcoin, bypassing the need for a regulator such as a government or central bank.

 
Facebook wants to make the technology respectable through its “Libra” project, but has hit political opposition around the world, and several financial partners have pulled out.
Unwilling to let private enterprise dictate terms, China and other nations are building their own digital payment systems, which could see fruition this year.
However, blockchain networks devour huge amounts of energy, and concerns will mount about their environmental impact as debate intensifies more broadly about technology’s contribution to climate change.
The price of privacy
Most companies are now actively engaged across the spectrum of another technological acronym, Smac: social, mobile, analytics and cloud, which affect how we communicate with friends and how we search and shop.
They are accentuating fears about privacy, after a series of data leaks at Facebook laid bare how much of our online lives are exploited by companies and political parties.

“People are becoming more conscious of sharing data but also in the same moment, the Nest cameras (for homeowners to monitor indoor security) and smart speakers are flying off the shelves,” says Bindels. “There’s a huge divide. People have been learning to trade privacy for convenience. It’s just another currency.”
Amnesty International, in a hard-hitting study last month into Facebook and Google, said that trade-off amounts to a “Faustian bargain” which imperils our human rights.
Tech wars
To Beijing’s anger, Washington alleges that Huawei and another telecoms group, ZTE, are little more than fronts for Chinese spy chiefs.
Ni Lexiong, professor at the Shanghai National Defence Strategy Institute, says US sanctions depriving those firms of access to US components would only encourage China to stand on its own feet.
“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 says.

Samm Sacks, an expert on China’s digital economy at the Washington think tank New America, says the tech stand-off could harm progress in areas such as precision medicine and AI-based diagnoses.
The two countries have cooperated in research, “and severing that could have global consequences”, she warns.
Taxing times
The US presidential election in November is likely to prove another flashpoint in the battle over disinformation peddled on social media.
Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren wants Amazon, Facebook and Google to be broken up on antitrust grounds.
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.
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.


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US-China tech war

2020’s five big tech trends, from Trump vs Huawei and the tech war to 5G roll-out, data privacy and blockchain

Will the world go 5G in 2020? That is one of the main tech conversations this year. Photo: Reuters/Jason Lee

Elizabeth Warren

FILE PHOTO: A Huawei logo and a 5G sign are pictured at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Shanghai, China June 28, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

Nest camera

Smartphones in 2020: the big reveals expected at CES, Mobile World Congress

LG’s curved electronic display wall at CES 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

=== PHOTO CAPTURED FROM FACEBOOK === Images of Apple's senior director of privacy, Jane Horvath. FACEBOOK.

Visitors test the new Xiaomi Mi 9 smartphone at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on February 27, 2019. - Phone makers will focus on foldable screens and the introduction of blazing fast 5G wireless networks at the world's biggest mobile fair as they try to reverse a decline in sales of smartphones. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

(FILES) In this file photo taken on January 10, 2019 attendees wait in line for a 5G exhibition at the Qualcomm booth during CES 2019 consumer electronics show, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. - The United States and China are in a virtual deadlock in the race for 5G, or fifth-generation wireless networks expected to unlock new services, an industry survey showed April 2, 2019. The report shows the United States has closed the gap with China in "readiness" for the ultrafast wireless systems and has more 5G deployments planned in 2019 than any other country. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)

The Huawei section at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. The Chinese telecommunications giant is expected to show its confidence in the world’s appetite for handsets lacking Google’s core apps by unveiling the international version of its Honor V30 Pro at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. Photo: AFP

Just how fast are China’s 5G networks? ZTE conducts tests in Guangzhou to find out

A Chinese customer tries out 5G services at a branch of China Mobile. Photo: EPA-EFE

People walk past the ZTE stand at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on February 25, 2019. - Phone makers will focus on foldable screens and the introduction of blazing fast 5G wireless networks at the world's biggest mobile fair starting February 25 in Spain as they try to reverse a decline in sales of smartphones. (Photo by Pau Barrena / AFP)

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Tax dodging internet giants, customer privacy, the long wait for 5G: analysts look at what’s coming in the next year in the tech world
Other themes include the US/China tech war, blockchain currencies and personal digital assistants



Experts talk about the five big trends for technology in 2020, from the US-China tech war to the prospect of Facebook, Google and Amazon finally paying meaningful taxes, the erosion of data privacy, and consolidation in TV streaming.
