As we approach the 4th quarter of fiscal year 2015, and soon to be at the midway point of this decade, I started to look at the predictions and indicators for internet growth by year 2020. Sounds futurist the year 2020 and I think we are starting to enter into the steeper slope of the curve now. In 2010 the internet had 1.7 billion users, today it has a little over 3.1 billion and by 2020 it should be at 5 billion. Check out the stats by country here on InternetWorldStats.com.
Forecasting the future of the internet is that hard to predict just look at what we do and ask yourself are we going to be doing any less of it. Twenty-five great points are listed in this article on Marketing in 2020 by Jeff Beer of FastCompany.com. By looking at marketing we can see the direction society is taking by observing the force trying to get in-front of the mass. Some key points I took away were virtual reality is reality, brand transparency and through technology it's about to get really personal.
Don't forget to consider the growth of the machine usage with the Internet of Things IoT. Both machine and human usage almost double in the next 5 years!
Top business-strategist Michael Wolf gave a presentation on the future of tech and media from 2016 to 2020 in the Wall Street Journal last October. I've been covering technology predictions in several articles and although there are some corrections in the stock market at the moment, there is nothing really holding the tech sector back. But, don't take my word for it, read Wolf's presentation on how consumer tech and media staged to grow by 535 Billion over the next 4 years.
You can view the presentation from the Business Insider here.
TechCrunch has a great article on the growth of enterprise software featuring a 3 trillion dollar opportunity, but it's bigger than that and there's so much room for small business and start ups. In short, mobile collaboration for your workforce with direct integration to product partners and stakeholders is the only model to develop for, anything else would be a disservice to your client.
Just five years ago, we wouldn’t have imagined that a farmer or construction worker could be an information worker. But with products like Farmlogs, Planet Labs and Airware in farming and agriculture, and PlanGrid or Skycatch in construction, all new demographics of the workforce are being supported by information technology. And this is just the beginning. As every employee on the planet is enabled by a smartphone, the addressable market for enterprise software grows from about half a billion people to the billions of workers leveraging mobile devices to do their jobs.
Every job is software-enabled, every industry is digitized. Read more at TechCrunch.com
Drones - The Evolution of Transportation If you read my blog you know I'm into flying cars and with traffic being what it is, they can't come about soon enough. Doesn't matter what city you live in, it's not any better anywhere else. Either too many vehicles on the road or a failing infrastructure. In this article on DailyMail.co.uk mega drones are being tested with multiple passengers, pilot-less control and with the ability to take the helm in an emergency. The aircraft technology is producing a much needed benefit for air traffic control a well as other industries. This is an epic shift in society, like going from horse and carriage to automobiles and entrepreneurs need to plan on this trend. In less than 5 years it will be at consumer price levels and in 10 years, common place. High rises and condos need to start being built with landing pads as the new garage. With growing populations, pollution, the need for the use of alternative energies, infrastructure issues, drones and personal aircraft are a great solution to easy all of these problems. And, aside from natural disasters and terrorism, one of the biggest problems our children will face in their life time that you can be certain of is population growth. Handling and managing all the demands on resources that population growth will bring are where the opportunities lie. If you think traffic sucks now, don't do anything about it. Everyone knows it's gotten worse in the last few years, and that's everywhere. So, forget the race to Mars, let's race to be the first country ready for the 22nd century. Embrace it. This is what will make America great!
Spoiler Alert - If you haven't seen the final episode of MadMen, read no more. MadMen was weekly TV series that ran on AMC and just came to a brilliant concluding episode. I found the show intriguing on multiple levels. First as a period piece into the advertising industry roots of the 50's to 70's. The characters were well formed and wisely engineered into an almost historic account of advertising growth as it was woven into American culture. The final episode tied it together with a twist I didn't see coming until the classic Coke ad brought it home.
Don Draper's smile while chanting as the new dawn arose could have been that he finally found peace, or was it that he just got the idea for one of the best ad campaigns in history. The next scene was the 1971 "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" commercial. Brilliantly written, directed and executed. (standing ovation). Through the course of the series the ad firm grows into a multi-million dollar empire. What's ironic now is that there is a new dawn in advertising again. The ad firms and TV stations that got rich during the MadMen period a now seeing a seismic shift in the platform, welcome the internet. The dawn is over but the sun hasn't full risen. The day hasn't even begun to warm yet. It'll be interesting to see how history and culture remember this segment of our development, who'll be the next Don Draper's and just how technology will evolve.
Opportunities are everywhere. Internet growth and online advertising are set to explode. Where will your business be?