By Johan de Villiers
Welcome to our first E-zine of 2022. With the start of the new year, we thought it would be apt to make some wild and wonderful predictions about the future of technology and the business landscape for the coming year, gathered from several global publications. As a caveat, a famous American poet, Yogi Berra once said: “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
The words “Web3” and “metaverse” will be used ad nauseum in the coming year. (Hustle)
Apple will try and compete against Disney+ and Netflix, by acquiring a movie/TV studio (CNBC)
Hot start-ups that will probably IPO in the coming year, will include Masterclass, Databricks, Stripe, Revolut and Rippling (Crunchbase)
Meme stocks such as GameStop, will remain very much in focus as retail investors continue to hype them up on platforms such as Robinhood. (The Economist)
Electric Vehicle makers (EV) will finally become profitable. This will include vehicle brands such as Lucid, Rivian and Fisker to compete with Tesla. (CNBC)
New forms of multifactor authentications (MFA) will make the use of passwords obsolete in 2022. (Government Technology)
Bill Gates predicts the end of the acute phase of the pandemic this year, as advances in vaccines and treatments continues. (Inc Magazine)
Bloomberg predicts that global inflation will remain stubbornly high in a survey with 47 leading economists, owing the current supply constraints being experienced. (Bloomberg)
Decentralized autonomous organisations (DAO) will be the new hyped, quick funding vehicle in much the same way that’s special acquisition companies (SPACs) were in 2021. (The Guardian)
Apple should be able to achieve a market cap exceeding USD 3 Trillion this year. Microsoft will probably follow shortly. (Seeking Alpha)
Latin Americna countries such as Panama and Paraguay may follow El Salvador’s lead and accept Bitcoin as legal tender. (CoinDesk)
The European Union will thru its regulators become the de facto referee of Big Tech companies in terms of anti-trust legislation. (Casey Newton)
Remote working will only be embraced by 10% of companies globally. 30% will return full time to the office and the remaining 60% will try to embrace a hybrid model.
Goldman Sachs predicts a minimum 9% increase in the S&P 500, which bodes well for stock markets globally. (Business Insider)
Natural Language Procession (NLP) will become the most funded silo in Artificial Intelligence in this year by VC firms. (Forbes)
Lithium, which is critical in the manufacture of EV batteries, will finally reach an inflection point as investors ponder the environmental damage that the extraction of this metal causes. Other, greener alternatives will come to the fore.
Let’s see how many of these predictions are accurate as we negotiate another challenging year.
Until next time, thank you for your continued support of First Technology Cape Town!
Warm Regards
Johan de Villiers
CEO
First Technology Western Cape