Many websites and blogs publish their predictions for the year ahead. Not many of them review their predictions at the end of the year though. Even fewer score their previous set of predictions.
It would have been difficult to forecast what happened this year. But let’s see how those 2020 predictions fared in the oddest of years.
1. Alerts from voice assistants
I said that “At the end of 2019, the Google Home device in our kitchen started answers requests with more suggestions of other skills.”
Last week I went to the CSFI breakfast event and it was great. I’ve been to a CSFI event before (I was one of the panellists), but it was a different format back then.
Last week we went through a document of web links and discussed each one. It was much more interesting than it sounds. Jemima Kelly, the FT journalist who wrote many of those articles was one of the panellists.
Facebook Libra
What’s in it for anyone except for Facebook? (Left unanswered but with some good points made:
It could be extremely disruptive and put massive pressure on the big currencies, making them look volatile.
Governments will try to squash it – and if they do, Facebook might use this as an opportunity to show that it’s not evil.
Facebook needs to find another revenue stream other than marketing, this might be the first.
Tesla stock was $312 on New Years Day 2018 and finished the year at $333, so on the face of it, the prediction was incorrect.
However, on 7 August, Elon Musk made the headlines by tweeting that “funding secured” at $420. The share price jumped 10% to $379. He was personally fined $20 million, and the company was fined the same amount.
Two months later, the stock was $250. The stock has been relatively volatile since then, climbing back to $376 and back down to $333.
The 30 second summary of this year’s Deloitte TMT Predictions
On Tuesday I went to the Deloitte TMT predictions (that’s Telco, Media and Telecommunications) event at CodeNode in London.
I’ve covered several of Deloitte’s events in the past – they’re often thought-provoking and insightful, based on some decent consumer research and with a good amount of humour thrown in.
Smartphones
“We’ve entered the beige phase” of mobile phones – they’re all looking the same, with consumers unable to differentiate new features.
One of the stand out quotes was that smartphones are now in an area of “invisible innovation”. That is, the connectivity (e.g. 5G), camera, processors and so on, are all improving, but consumers don’t see these. Continue reading The future for smartphones, digital media and AR→
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Here are my predictions for the ‘digital’ industry for the coming year. I’ve been making digital predictions since 2010 and at the end of each year I review how the predictions fared – see the digital predictions for 2017 and work backwards.
1. Tesla share price to drop significantly
The Tesla Roadster 1 – yes it’s lovely. What will 2018 have in store for the car company? Photo credit: randychiu.
Each quarter, Tesla’s costs keep increasing by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Its profit margin keeps slipping further into the red.
Other companies, both traditional and new entrants, will catch up to Tesla in 2018.
Finally, 2017 was generally a good financial year, and if consumer confidence drops in 2018, people will buy fewer cars. There’s also the debt pile-up in the US car loans industry. Total auto loans in the US have increased 70% in the last 7 years to $1.17 trillion – and much of it is subprime, with some buyers opting for 7(!!) year loans (think about the value of the car at the end of 7 years).
Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.
Finance
The Spanish Bank, BBVA, approached its latest mobile app in a totally different way. They reduced the size of the team to 15 and incorporated Design Thinking (for more information about Design Thinking, read this excellent article from the UK Design Council). The results have been very impressive:
Credit card applications increased by 80%
Current account openings by 20%
Sales of investment funds up 50%
Sales in pension plans, health insurance and home insurance doubled
Warning: fake WhatsApp apps started appearing this week
It’s been a shameful week for security with two large public scams. The first was a fake WhatsApp app appeared in the Google Play store. It would have taken a very keen eye to spot any problem with the fake app. And the second scam was fake supermarket vouchers being distributed among WhatsApp users. The problem with the voucher was that it took users to a landing page which asked for personal details. Continue reading Weekly news round up 9 November 2017→
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I wish I had as many hairs on my head as on my arms. Nice watch though.
After months of stating that I won’t get a smart watch, I’ve gone and bought one. Sort of. And I’m delighted with it. It’s the Garmin Forerunner 235.
I’ve been preparing to run a marathon since the start of 2016. During training my mile paces (timings) were all over the place. During a half marathon in May, someone suggested I get a GPS based running watch to keep my paces consistent.
After a little research I realised the decent ones are well over £200 and I didn’t want to spend that much. I found a way to get a 50% discount on the specific watch I wanted, the Garmin Forerunner 235, and now I’m hooked – not just on the running features. Continue reading Garmin Forerunner 235 ‘Smartwatch’ Review (I Love It)→
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Sales of the Apple Watch haven’t been released, but stocks continue to soar. Photo courtesy of Michael Roth
It should be holiday season by now, but the Christmas and Summer holidays productivity downturn seemed to cease two to three years ago (I’m basing this on my experience in the UK).
This is what I’ve read recently:
Banks could be sheepdogs (like Apple) – A great article describing how banks are utilities, but could become extremely important in the Identity revolution
