Our predictions for 2016: what topics are likely to make headlines in 2016?

Video everywhere

This encompasses an explosion in data traffic on all devices, fuelled by video traffic, the proliferation of video products and new pricing formats from cellular operators – in the vein of Verizon’s Go90 and T-Mobile’s Binge On – associated enhancements to LTE platforms (LTE-A/B/U), Netflix’s global strategy as it marches towards the 100 million subscriber mark by the end of 2016, the race to 4K and HDR TV, debates in Europe over harmonising copyrights, geoblocking limitations…

Digital trust

The increase in a wide range of dangers in digital ecosystems has given birth to a market that is expected to grow twice as fast as the IT market as a whole. By the end of the year, Europe is due to have passed a new data protection directive. Will it provide a new foundation for renegotiating the Safe Harbour agreement and making progress with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)? Will the ad-blocking phenomenon be made obsolete by the expected virtues of programmatic advertising?

Consolidation

In Europe, we will wonder just how far the consolidation trend can go as we question the hoped-for synergies, the attitude of the anti-trust authorities, the potential impact on prices, on fixed-mobile convergence, on ultrafast fixed and mobile network rollouts, etc.

Meanwhile, in the United States, we don’t yet know whether:

• A price war will break out in the mobile market?
• Cable’s dominance of the superfast access market could be threatened?
• A fixed-mobile convergence trend will take hold as it has in Europe?

FinTech

These represent as much opportunity for innovation as threats to the banks which are involved in their own digital transformation, along with hopes for the creation of a large-scale mobile banking ecosystems with a strong competition between banks, Internet platforms, and telcos, plus concepts that are creating a lot of buzz such as crypto-currency, and more precisely, blockchain technology.

Here’s wishing you a very happy 2016 with IDATE DigiWorld, and we look forward to seeing you at DigiWorld Future and the DigiWorldSummit !