Digital Economy Value to Hit $23 Trillion

By 2025, the number of personal smart devices will reach 40 billion and the total number of connections around the world will reach 100 billion, creating a digital economy worth $23 trillion, technology giant, Huawei has said.

According to its new report titled: Global Industry Vision (GIV) 2025, all things will be able to sense and all things will be connected, leading to a world where everything is intelligent.

Essentially, GIV 2025 is anchored on three visions for the future. The first is all things sensing, more and better connections, bringing everything to the intelligent world.

According to GIV 2025, the intelligent world would truly have arrived once all things can sense and all things are connected. By 2025, there will be 40 billion personal smart devices and 100 billion connections around the world. “The Industrial Internet will be the major source of these 100 billion connections. The massive amounts of data generated by the ability for all things to sense will be extensively integrated in all industries, forming new industries like the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and Connected Vehicles.

“With more and better connections, data traffic will grow exponentially, and most of it will be from video. The Cloud VR market will reach $292 billion by 2025,” GIV said.

GIV 2025 described a future where the role of smart devices and smart robots will evolve from being just a tool to being an assistant. It said the penetration rate of smart assistants will be 90 per cent by 2025, with 12 per cent of homes having smart service robots, adding that with the assistance of guide robots, the world’s 39 million blind people and 246 million people with impaired vision will live normal lives.

The second vision is +Intelligence which will foster new business species and drive leapfrog development for industries

According to GIV 2025, with high-speed connections, IoT, and artificial intelligence (AI)-based cloud, +Intelligence platforms will help industries achieve leapfrog development through intelligent analysis, decision-making, and assistance.

“By 2025, intelligent technology will be applied extensively in the transportation industry, with more than 60 million vehicles connected to 5G networks and 100 per cent of new vehicles connected to the Internet. When intelligence is incorporated into manufacturing, ICT will converge with operational technology (OT) at an accelerated pace. This will generate positive returns for innovation, the industry, the value chain, and the ecosystem as a whole. By adopting intelligence in cities, urban planners will be able to create new paths for sustainable development in security management, transportation planning, and other domains, enabling city residents to enjoy the safety, convenience, and high living standards made possible by a digital life,” the report added.

The third vision of the report is mass innovation which would tap into the opportunities of a digital economy valued at $23 trillion.

Huawei predicts that the digital economy will be worth $23 trillion, adding that the value of +Intelligence will be widely accessible to manufacturing, services, transportation, and many other industries.

“The outcomes of innovation in the intelligent world will be apparent everywhere. The intelligent world will reshape industries and give birth to new intelligent industries. It will also enable industries to go beyond current growth trajectories and achieve leapfrog development while giving a massive boost to innovation,” the report said.

Huwei Board Director and Chief Strategy Marketing Officer, William Xu said: “This is the first time that Huawei has released the GIV report. Based on data and predictions about the future, we aim to unfold the industry blueprint of an intelligent world driven by information and communications technology (ICT). It is our goal to build the foundations that will enable the diverse ICT industry ecosystem to truly transition into the intelligent world, and team with our global partners to build this fully connected, intelligent world.”

Relying on Huawei’s own business strengths and insights into industry trends, GIV 2025 has its own unique research methodology-adopting a mix of data and trend analysis to elaborate on global information communication (ICT) trends and lay out the blueprint for the ICT industry. The data used in GIV 2025 spans more than 170 countries and regions. This report covers three dimensions (all things connected, all things sensing, and all things intelligent) and 37 metrics, including the amount of data generated, the percentage of enterprises that adopt AI, and the number of personal smart devices.