Consumers are showing a growing preference for contactless payments, which is pushing many regions toward a cashless economy. For example, Pew Research Center notes that 4 in 10 Americans (41%) have stopped using physical cash for weekly purchases, which is nearly double the number in 2015. Not only would a cash-free society make everyday transactions a lot easier for consumers, but it is also bound to reshape the banking and financial services space. As confirmation that the world is migrating to digital-first payments, consider that the global mobile wallet installed base will increase by 2 billion in just 5 years—climbing to a total installed base of 5.6 billion by 2027, according to ABI Research.
Connectivity is becoming central to almost every aspect of our lives. It has radically changed our lifestyle, enhanced our productivity, transformed the way we work and do business, and reduced the digital divide between developed and developing countries. As a result, demand for telecommunication technologies has exploded, touching almost every node of the infrastructure from the long haul to access networks, such as fixed broadband.
Europe, being one of the most developed and affluent regions in the world, will play a key role in the widespread 5G rollout. Europe is at the forefront of smart cities, campus lab testing, sustainability, and telecommunications innovation, not to mention the consumers, manufacturers, and various industrial enterprises that seek an improved mobile experience and/or must run automated systems on a private network. Each of these applications, among many others, will use 5G coverage as the backbone for myriad use cases.
The Communication Service Providers (CSPs) of today either have their eye on or have already begun the process of virtualizing their networks. This comes in the form of Network Function Virtualization (NFV), notably Cloud-native Network Functions (CNFs). The responsibilities of traditional hardware network assets provided by Network Equipment Vendors (NEVs) are increasingly being carried out through software, which improves Time to Market (TTM). To fill this growing market need, public cloud service providers have come forward to help virtualize 4G/5G networks all around the world. The public cloud not only provides improved deployment flexibility, but also affordable “pay-as-you-go” pricing models based on microservice applications. While jumping straight into the public cloud may be practical for some newcomers (greenfield operators) or industry disruptors like DISH, the traditional CSP should still view private on-premises deployment as a proven telco cloud strategy because it delivers on performance, cost, and security. Indeed, in the near term, 5G Core (5GC) network workloads will likely be hosted in on-premises cloud stacks.
Sidelink is a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication technology that broadens Long Term Evolution (LTE)/5G network coverage. This technology has been around since The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 12 when it was used to enable basic vehicular communication (Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)) on LTE networks. Over the years, there have been incremental upgrades, such as Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) sidelink support in 3GPP Release 14 and 5G support in Release 15, among others. Then, 3GPP Release 16 introduced 5G New Radio (NR) support, which is highly beneficial for 5G users looking for deployment flexibility on-premises. Now we arrive at 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18 (5G Advanced), both of which are bound to challenge the way you think of sidelink.
Digital twin companies are in a prime position for robust growth. In 2021, ABI Research forecasts US$3.5 billion in revenue coming from digital twin software. But by 2030, we anticipate that number to soar to roughly US$34 billion as digital twin solutions are embraced across all verticals (manufacturing, industry, smart cities, etc.). This post will provide an in-depth profile of five of the top companies providing innovative software within the digital twin market.
With traditional banking and commerce trading, a bank or another financial institution is responsible for ensuring security. But when it comes to storing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, users are on their own. Once a user loses access to their coin portfolio, it’s likely gone forever. To safeguard against cryptocurrency attacks, crypto users will increasingly turn to cold storage wallets, an ultra-secure crypto storage solution that operates offline and involves a hardware device.
If every consumer vehicle on the planet were electric last year, the total energy consumption worldwide would have been 13% higher than the previous year. As Electric Vehicles (EVs) drastically increase energy drawn from the electric grid and contradict sustainability efforts, the importance of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging solutions cannot be understated. Because it's still a relatively new technology, this resource will explain how V2G works.
Recently, ABI Research wrote a research report taking a deep dive into the current public safety network environment. One of the main highlights was that, while 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular broadband is efficient in public safety use cases, 5G is fast approaching the emergency services space. The superior positioning, latency, and reliability of a 5G network will enable emergency services and emergency response teams to work more efficiently, gather better situational awareness, and accomplish the ultimate goal—save lives by reducing response times.
Integrating Augmented Reality (AR) into the enterprise opens the door for new, innovative ways for the workforce to carry out their tasks. As pointed out in the blog post Use Cases of the Enterprise Metaverse and Immersive Collaboration (with Examples), AR is a key enabler for delivering immersive collaboration in the metaverse. Employee training was the leading enterprise AR use case in 2022, with additional value seen in areas such as remote assistance, workflow guidance, knowledge capture, and content creation.