Why is everyone so interested in the top 10 issues for the ICT industry for the next year, announced every year around this time?

The very act of predicting the ever-changing technological trends of the information and communications age with just 10 factors is itself a topic of discussion, but perhaps what makes it even more interesting is the fact that the major issues change every year.

As the person in charge of the Information and Communications Technology Promotion Center, which announces the top 10 issues, said, it is not enough to 'lay a magnifying glass', but since it matches more than 5 trends, there is no need to argue that there are many mistakes.

In any case, since the nearly 450 employees and project research managers in the field have selected the technologies they think are the most important, I think that observing how these technologies change each year will be one of the key points to watch in 2016.

Looking at the top 10 issues for next year announced by the agency (see this magazine's article, "The 10 Top Issues in the ICT Industry in 2016: A Look at the Future"), they can be summarized as automobiles, drones, artificial intelligence, and robots. Broadly speaking, we can see that artificial intelligence is becoming a major trend.

This trend has been in full swing since last year. For reference, let's compare the predicted issues for 2015 announced last year with the actual issues this year. The acceleration of growth and competition in the Internet of Things, new security threats, and competition in smart home appliances, which were selected as the top 10 anticipated issues for 2015 at the end of last year, have been fueled this year by the announcement of new platforms that will herald the full-scale Internet of Things market.

Last year's anticipated wearable competition diversified this year with the successive launches of smartwatches. Chinese ICT companies' dominance has been bolstered by the growing competitiveness of local smartphone makers in China and India, as well as the strengthening of their dominance in the Chinese TV panel market. Furthermore, the evolution of mobile payment platforms has led to a competition to secure leadership in the mobile ecosystem (payments, healthcare, etc.), and the content competition has led to the need to secure content for virtual and augmented reality this year.

Extending this trend back to the past six years reveals even more interesting findings. Cloud computing, which ranked 10th in 2010, rose to 3rd in 2011, 7th in 2012 (with big data 3rd), 7th in 2013 (with big data adoption 4th), and 9th in 2014 (with big data investment 4th). Finally, in 2015, the industry saw a surge in software startups, leading to the internalization of cloud computing, big data, and software.

Issues related to the mobile ecosystem remain consistent. Mobile internet (second place) and mobile security (seventh place) in 2010 were followed by mobile social networking services (eighth place) in 2012, mobile social games (third place) in 2013, mobile data (second place) in 2014, and the mobile ecosystem (fifth place) in 2015. The Internet of Things (IoT) emerged as the top issue last year and this year, while smartwatches and wearables emerged in 2013 and have become key topics.

Other opinions, in addition to the top 10 ICT issues (2016), included the expansion of the O2O sector, virtual reality preparing for a quantum leap, the crisis of global ICT companies, the rise of low-cost/low-spec ICT devices, a tectonic shift in the top 5 smartphones, the rapid growth of the domestic cloud market, the next-generation mobile OS war, and Tizen at a crossroads of expansion.

Looking at the issues discussed above, we can see that similar issues are constantly recurring, to the point where it feels like everything has already been addressed. Next year, we will see a fierce competition between global giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook and countless startups, focusing on issues we all know: artificial intelligence, automobiles, drones, robots, security, and healthcare.

The key isn't to limit trends to a few key issues, like the top ten, but to identify business opportunities that exist among key keywords. Whether it's artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things (IoT), you need to create a market that aligns with your business goals. Of course, this assumes what customers want. Our approach to the top ten issues of 2016 is also related to this.