New Web tracking technology; more free services; disruption for capital equipment vendors, growth for iWatch and Windows Phone, and more.
Curated by Gregory Pings, manager, Content Marketing, Xerox
Researchers at the PARC, Inc., shared their ideas on which ideas, products, and events will shape 2014. PARC’s seminal innovation in the 1970s helped pave the way to how we work in high technology today. Below is an overview of the top tech predictions for 2014, courtesy of the people who are inventing our future. More details are available on the PARC blog.
- New Web tracking technology will rely on device fingerprinting, rather than cookies. That’s because mobile apps do not use cookies. With device fingerprinting, users are identified by analyzing unique features of their devices, and on other identifiers such as phone numbers. (Julien Freudiger)
- New generation of free services. Companies will begin to provide a new series of free services in order to collect more fine-grained personal information. Free phones and Internet service will be particularly appealing in developing countries. (Julien Freudiger)
- The rise of the Chief Customer Experience Officer. This role lies at the intersection of the IT and the marketing functions. It moves beyond awareness building and brand management to ‘live’ co-creation of the consumption experience with the customers themselves. Clearly new competences are required: For example, the ability to unpack the needs of many segments in many contexts, simultaneously calls for agile systems and big data analytic chops. (Jeremy Clark)
- Growth for Windows Phone. Windows Phone is quietly grabbling market share in the U.S. and the European Union’s top 5 markets. While you may not be paying attention (shout out to all you iPhone fans), the top mobile application developers are. Just in the last 30 days Instagram, Waze, and Mint jumped on board the Windows Phone platform. (Tim Curley)
- iWatch. Since the iWatch is expected to run iOS, since there is a significantly larger number of iOS developers already out there, and since developing for iOS is a lot easier and has more potential than developing against any particular fitness tracking API, I think a large number of third-party apps will be available very soon after the launch of the iWatch. (Christian Fritz)
- Disruption for capital equipment vendors. Expect big steps forward in areas from sensors to cloud computing to predictive and real-time analytics to intelligent automation. These capabilities will allow capital equipment vendors to add new services, and even change their business models from selling capital equipment to billing by use of the product. (Leon Wong)
- Growth of mobile and connectivity to sensors, vehicles, wearables. One key area that will gather attention is encompassing applications which contextualize user information, and benefit the consumer as well as the enterprise. This is especially true as wearables and sensors become more pervasive, and with the Internet of Things market poised to take off in the ensuing years. (Jatinder Singh)
