Many technology trends will continue or emerge in 2023, but according to ABI Research there are five trends that won’t.
The market research firm thinks the industrial metaverse, 5G wearables, printed electronics, satellite-to-cell services and private 5G are unlikely to become a major factor this year.
“War, inflation, political upheaval, energy shortages and the ongoing fallout from a global pandemic are still creating a persistent sense of uncertainty,” said Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer at ABI. “Labor shortages, supply chain issues, falling consumer sentiment and rising input costs are squeezing many markets. However, the common aspect between all of these is that technology can either be the anchor dragging down operations or the mainsail powering companies forward.”
1) No metaverse investment
ABI forecasts that 2023 will not be the year that industrial manufacturing vendors invest vast sums of money into the metaverse.
Why? Because the climate does not currently lend itself to investments that lack clear value pathways such as virtual worlds and avatars. Instead, industrial manufacturing vendors will invest in tools to build a digital thread for feedback loops between designers, engineers and manufacturing teams, ABI said.
2) 5G wearables
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many expected 5G to come to wearables quickly after the launch of services. Some have been expecting this to happen at CES for years. But ABI Research said it does not expect this to happen in 2023.
The good news is that with the evolution of 5G, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) will be introducing its Reduced Capability (RedCap) New Radio (NR) release. This will help with potential future wearables as it is aimed at reducing costs and energy-constrained devices. RedCap will help enable cheaper, longer battery life and less bandwidth devices than current NR products.
3) Private LTE will remain dominant
ABI said it is unlikely private 5G will emerge in 2023 as enterprise 5G features are only starting to appear in chipsets this year, which will delay availability to at least early 2024.
This means 4G LTE will be the dominant cellular connectivity technology for private enterprises until at least 2027.
4) Printed electronics will remain niche
While printed electronic designs will be one of the major growth areas for the internet of things (IoT) companies, ABI Research thinks the market is still in its infancy and likely won’t have a major impact in 2023.
As relationships between printing companies — those developing near field communication or radio frequency identification label/tag printers — and OEMs and ODMs are developing, there will still need to be some modification to production line and facility levels. That said, some of the deals made in 2022 have given the IoT market a glimpse into the printing technologies of the future.
5) Satellites and cellular
Satellite-to-cell technology is gaining momentum with Apple, Huawei, SpaceX, Globalstar, AST Space Mobil and Lynk all of which are launching services. But it remains a specialized application.
ABI Research said this technology shows potential in the years to come but it won’t be 2023 when it emerges or even 2024 as these years will be used to drum up interest. The market research firm forecasts non-terrestrial network mobile (NTN-Mobile) technology, which includes satellite-to-cell services, to reach 6.8 million connections by 2027.
The full research can be found in ABI Research’s “74 Technology Trends That Will — And Will Not — Shape 2023” white paper.