Duncan Stewart’s Top Three Tech Predictions of 2020

Duncan Stewart is Deloitte Canada’s fortune teller in the areas of technology, media, and telecommunications. As Director of Research, Duncan’s primary objectives each year is to look forward to the technology trends that will most likely happen in the coming years. Deloitte Canada’s list is fairly broad, so we asked him to narrow down the list at the recent Deloitte Canada TMT Predictions 2020 event in Vancouver. Here are his top three!

Duncan’s top three favourites for 2020 include:

Private 5G Networks – Duncan believes that in the coming years, every company will be taking advantage of the speed an low latency of this technology to help power the internal operations of the company. Unlike the public networks owned by the BIG THREE carriers in Canada, these private networks will provide better security, privacy, and redundancy. They may also provide additional cost savings and features that public networks may not have.

Edge AI Chips – AI technology will allow businesses and the people inside them to work faster and more efficiently than ever. Many of these technologies are already inside devices like your smartphone. Duncan believes that the key will be chips that sit inside the devices that do not require access to the cloud for support. These chips will become increasingly ubiquitous, and that their presence on board will increase reliability and speed. And will even help you with your cooking as in his example with your oven.

Antenna TV – This might sound like a throwback, rather than the future, but Duncan believes that the future will include a mix of antenna and streaming services. Canadian TV networks broadcast completely uncompressed HD signals, which most Canadians can access for free with a $30 – 40 HDTV antenna. The most surprising part is that the people that are adopting this way of consumption are from the 18 – 34 demographic. This is an age group that was previously thought to be completely dark to broadcast TV.

What do you think of Duncan’s top three? Do you think he’ll be right? Or do you think there’s something else that might be more likely to happen in the coming years? Let us know in the comments below!