Might there possibly be a connection between the Instagram post in the morning and the purchase of a pair of jeans from online trader Zalando just a few hours later? And can an analysis of a consumer’s last credit card payment perhaps provide a clue to their state of health? At first sight these are, admittedly, rather curious questions, yet they are of increasing importance in the current age. That is because more and more conclusions can be drawn from the immense flood of data that progressive digitalisation is producing each day. The key term here is big data. The efficient use of data with the aid of technological tools and intelligent algorithms opens up opportunities for companies to optimise their business processes, for instance, or paves the way for research into new diseases. And the potential is huge: whereas, according to IDC, just 2% of the 64 zettabytes (ZB) of data produced in 2020 were stored or kept until the next year, the generation of new data is set to increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% until 2025.
The hidden treasures waiting to be unearthed in the rich data pool are the result of many mega-trends interlocking. Among these is artificial intelligence (AI), which is an indispensable element of Industry 4.0, for instance. Intelligent automation, or the Internet of Things, where objects exchange information with each other independently via the internet, would not be possible without AI or big data. Machine learning with the aid of data is not just in demand for production, though: from autonomous driving to medical diagnostics, entirely new opportunities are opening up. To give an example, the number of robot-assisted operations in bowel surgery has risen fivefold since 2016. The dominant robot system in surgery across the world is the Da Vinci model of US group Intuitive Surgical, which has now been used in the performance of more than 7 million operations.
Mega-trends such as big data, robotics and artificial intelligence have also long since become part and parcel of everyday life. Digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa are an ever-present companion, as are translation programmes and sophisticated algorithms that constantly give us tips on what we could consume. The rising demand for these technologies ensures rapid growth. According to Precedence Research, the AI market alone will expand to some USDtn 1.6 by 2030, corresponding to an annual growth rate of 38.1%. Experts are reckoning on double-digit percentage rises for big data, too: the size of the global market for big data & business analytics is expected to reach USDbn 684.1 by the end of the decade, equivalent to a CAGR of 13.5%.
The demand for robots is also increasing dynamically. Tech all-rounder Amazon, for instance, even has its own robot division. The US giant bought Kiva Systems exactly ten years ago, later renaming it Amazon Robotics. The company not only conducts research in the field of automated work environments, but also puts these into practice. Logistics is one of the key issues at Amazon – the group has more than 100,000 transport robots across the world, as well as 6 Robo-Stows and 30 palletising robots. Anyone dealing with robot manufacturers will certainly have come across Fanuc, with some 3 million industrial robots of the Japanese company in use in factories around the globe. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the land of the rising sun is the leader in the manufacture of handy gadgets: around 45 per cent of robots in the world came out of Japan’s production facilities. A research report from Market Research Future predicts that the market as a whole will climb at a CAGR of 22.8% to reach USDbn 214.7 by 2030.
Source: Precedence Research, Reportlinker.com, Market Research Future
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