Cloud (M&E), a Benefactor of the COVID-19 Pandemic

While the pandemic will not necessarily drive existing gamers to the cloud, it has helped to accelerate the outreach to new gamers by making gaming more accessible.

De-Siloing Security Analytics and Intelligence Gathering in IoT: An IBM Perspective

Although it may sound counter-intuitive, often times intelligence gathered from different applications, systems, or even devices is not pooled in an efficient manner. 

Who’s Got the Power: Energy Harvesting Ecosystem Seeing More Design Wins

Increasing concern for IoT sustainability and, more practically, for greater sensor device autonomy has helped drive extensive R&D, but few concrete applications, over the past decade in the field of energy harvesting.

New Consumer Smartglass Operators Entering a Soon-to-Be Competitive Market

According to ABI Research’s latest AR database, consumer AR smartglass shipments will reach almost 3 million units in 2023 and will grow to 6 million in 2025.

Sustainability, E-Waste, and Other Complicated Things in the IoT Business

Among sustainable industries, IoT and AI are at the core of the roadmap, with gateway, sensor 5G, and AI deployment paving the way for environmental monitoring and increasing the possibility and convenience of tracking and reducing waste.

Implosion in Demand for Personal Mobility Collapses New Vehicle Sales and Ride Hailing Trips in 2020

COVID-19 and the resultant measures taken by the government across the world to contain the spread of the virus have collapsed the demand for personal transit, with all mobility modes at the consumer’s disposal contracting significantly in the first half of 2020. Following robust growth of 14% in 2019, the ride-hailing market has faced its first significant disruption this year, with strict controls on personal mobility, combined with a growing concern over shared spaces resulting in a contraction of over 59% in 1H 2020, finds ABI Research.

“While it might have been expected that growing consumer concerns around shared spaces would push them back into privately owned cars, this has done little to offset the collapse in new vehicle sales. With the near-total disruption of the bricks and mortar retail channel for new vehicles further compounded by a worsening macroeconomic situation it’s a bleak outlook going into 2021,” says James Hodgson, Principal Analyst at ABI Research.

Up to 2.5 Million Biometric Payment Cards to be issued in 2021 as Second-Generation Architectures Hit the Market

According to ABI Research, up to 2.5 million biometric payment cards will be issued in 2021 as the market reaps the benefits of significant ecosystem efforts, tailored specially to help reduce product cost, improve yield, and simplify manufacturing processes. Today over 20 biometric payment card pilots are active globally, and the first commercial launch, by BNP Paribas, was announced earlier in 2020. The biometric payment card is viewed as the next-generation evolutionary card form-factor to help enhance contactless authentication, providing a future contactless payments experience without limits.

“It’s taken time for the biometric payment card market to take shape because it is the most complex card form-factor ever developed. First-generation biometric payment card solutions can command an Average Selling Price (ASP) anywhere between US$20 and US$30, significantly higher than today’s US$1 to US$2 mark for a contact or contactless payment card. Cost is one of the most significant inhibiting factors keeping the biometric payment card form-factor firmly within the piloting and evaluation phase,” explains Phil Sealy, Digital Security Research Director.