I attended CES 2020 in Las Vegas last week because of the impact 5G and edge computing will have on the consumer and enterprise markets in the next five years. The primary focus of the event is biased towards consumer electronics – OLED, 8K TVs, tablets, audio products, gaming, wearables – but new categories are taking more floor space including vehicle technology, AI and robotics, drones, and AR/VR products.
Key themes that present both opportunities and challenges in the telecommunication market follow:
- Applied AI – Neon the artificial human created buzz at the show but a more promising technology is FaceMe which has a facial recognition engine.
- 5G and Edge Computing Infrastructure – much of the discussion in both the sessions and on the trade show floor was on last mile connectivity and the how smart devices can leverage the capabilities of this enabling technology.
- Security Management – The industry is attempting to solve the age-old problem of centralized silo security management which will not work in a distributed cloud native environment.
- Data Privacy – Regulation is coming to allow consumers more control of how and when data is collected and then sold for commercial use.
- Application Developer Ecosystem – Building a robust application developer community
- Autonomous Driving – Deployment of the technology is likely in 2030 not sooner. Advanced driver assistance systems innovation investments are more likely in the next 3 to 5 years. Nvidia, Intel (Mobileye), and Qualcomm all demonstrated platforms focused on ADAS.
- Quantum Computing – it is moving out of the labs into production