Technology 2020

Technology 2020

Twenty tech trends for 2020

1. Tesla’s cybertruck will not ship

This is an easy prediction to make, because even Tesla isn’t claiming that its eye-catching angular steel beast will be available for sale in 2020. The company’s own pitch is that production won’t even begin until 2021, with owners receiving their first shipments in 2022. But the gap is relevant to Tesla’s future: where the company was once genuinely ahead of the curve, in making beautiful electric cars that people wanted to buy, it has increasingly relied on beating its competitors to announcements, rather than actually shipping. The list of Elon Musk’s as-yet-unfulfilled promises grows every year – but the electric fleets of BMW, Ford, General Motors and others grow faster.

2. Google’s Duplex won’t come to Europe

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One of the most impressive, and futuristic, products to have come from Google in recent years, Duplex is an AI assistant that can make calls to local businesses on your behalf to do things like book appointments and find out opening times. The tool was criticised when the company first revealed it, for being so good that its use could plausibly be described as “deceptive”: the AI assistant even injects “um” and “er” into speech to sound more human. That, combined with the difficulties of gaining consent for receiving an automated cold call, means that GDPR might well keep the technology from European shores for years to come.

3. Advertising will come to smart speakers

Amazon and Google comfortably dominate the smart speaker landscape, but neither has yet answered an important question: what’s the advantage of getting all these devices in homes? Aggressive price cuts mean that neither is making a substantial amount of income from sales, and the absence of paid services means that they aren’t taking a glorious 30% cut of revenue either. Amazon has long experimented with using Alexa as a retail channel, but the only way to really make millions is by delivering sweet, sweet advertising to the ears of your customers. Expect the dial to be turned up.

4. 5G will be meaningful

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For Brits, 5G is technically here already, with multiple networks offering the ultrafast mobile standard in denser urban areas. But there are few devices that support the new standard yet – and fewer still that are acceptable to the gadget-obsessed early adopters who would otherwise be first on board, since the flagship devices from manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and Apple continue to be 4G only. That will change in 2020, when you can expect hardware like the Pixel 5, iPhone 12 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S11 to support the faster connections.

5. Your homescreen will still look the same

It’s been years since any consumer app broke through into the mainstream – with an honourable exception for TikTok among the under-25s – and that trend shows no real sign of curving upwards in 2020. Between the dominance of default apps from Apple and Google, and the ability of the major platforms to acquire, clone or kill upstart competitors, it’s a hard time to be a consumer software company. Harder still to become one of the 28 who get a coveted spot on a typical user’s homescreen, rather than being buried in a folder.

6. Facebook will kill Portal

It was always hubristic for Facebook to release an Echo competitor. The company had no real expertise in building hardware, nor an obvious strategy for getting its products to market: it may own the world’s most valuable advertising real estate, but it’s not a store. Then Cambridge Analytica broke, and Portal went from a bold idea to a bad one. Who would want to put an always-on microphone connected directly to Menlo Park in their homes? The answer, it seems, is “not many people”, because Portal sales have reportedly been minuscule. A second iteration was squeezed out earlier this year; don’t expect a third.