Deloitte’s TMT Predictions 2016, now in their sixteenth year, include:
Touch commerce accelerates the mobile check out
According to Deloitte, 2016 will mark the rise of mobile touch commerce, which will be used by 50 million consumers by the end of the year, an increase of 150 percent from last year. Consumers love browsing retail sites and apps on their phones; payment however is typically far more clunky, and abandoned baskets are commonplace. Touch commerce allows customers to make a secure payment on a mobile device, authorised simply through a fingerprint or a few touches of the screen, without having to provide registration.
Julian Rae, technology partner at Deloitte in Cambridge, comments: “Consumers love being constantly connected to their smartphones, from the early hours in the morning to late at night. With the introduction of a simplified payment process, there is a clear opportunity for converting browsing into purchases with a simplified payment process, wherever they are.
“Crucially, touch commerce reduces significantly the time taken from browsing to transaction on a mobile phone, to seconds rather than minutes.”
Trailing millennials are the pro-PC, not the post-PC, generation
This year’s report also predicts that trailing millennials (18-24 year olds) are likely to be the biggest PC users in 2016, and are very unlikely to abandon personal computers altogether. Although regarded as the smartphone generation, this age group sees smartphones and PCs as complements, not substitutes. Its ownership, intent to purchase and use of PCs will likely be higher than any other age group in 2016.
Rae adds: “Having a mobile-first strategy will be necessary in 2016, especially if your market includes millennials.
“However, a mobile-only strategy will simply not work, as this assumes that millennials have already abandoned, or are about to abandon their computers. Our research shows that millennials still use their PCs, and sometimes even prefer the PC to mobile.”
Other technology predictions include:
Women in IT jobs: it is about education, but it is also about more than just education
Deloitte also predicts that, by the end of 2016, fewer than 25 per cent of information technology (IT) jobs in developed countries will be held by women. The lack of gender diversity in IT is both a social and economic issue. Global costs may be in the tens of billions of dollars; according to one study, the gender gap in IT costs the UK alone about $4 billion annually*.