14 Tech Trends That Will Make Someone Billions Of Dollars Next Year

REUTERS/Dadang Tri

As 2014 winds to a close, it’s once again time to dust off the crystal ball and take a look at the predictions for 2015.

Which technologies are going to blow up in 2015 and keep growing in 2016, creating billions of dollars for the companies that serve in these areas?

To answer that, we scoured the research from leading analyst firms like IDC, Gartner, Forrester and others.

Companies will buy massive hacker insurance policies

The hack attacks of companies like Target, Home Depot, and Sony are just the beginning, Forrester Research predicts.

In 2015, 60% or more of brand name companies will be hit by hackers. Retail companies are going to spend twice as much on computer security than ever before.

And companies will routinely buy $100 million cyberinsurance policies.

Smartwatches will win over fitness bands

In 2015, half of  smart band wearers will choose a smartwatch instead, Gartner predicts.

Fitness wearables will sell 68.1 million units in 2015, down from 70 million units in 2014, with smart bands accounting for 17 million and smart watches (devices that cost $149+) accounting for 21 million.

The wearables market is expected to generate $7.14 billion in 2015, up from a predicted $5.17 billion in 2014, according to Statista.

The Apple Watch will “dominate”

Of all the many smartwatch options out there, the Apple Watch will be the most in demand, Forrester predicts. That’s good for Apple and for Watch app developers.

Forrester says Apple will “dominate” and sell more wrist devices in 2015 “than anyone else has cumulatively sold.”

By 2016, Forrester believes Apple’s market share will drop to below 50% as more Android competitors, and perhaps one from Amazon, hit the scene.

Everyday things will get a chip and be accessible from the Internet

In 2015, the Internet of Things (IoT) will take off, where every object gets a chip (appliance, pill bottles, manufacturing equipment) and can be accessed by the Internet, both IDC and Gartner predict.

In 2015, 4.9 billion smart gadgets will be in use. Manufacturing, utilities, and transportation will lead the way, Gartner says, but in five years all industries will be slapping sensors and chips onto everything, IDC says.

This will also create a huge market for cloud computing. By 2018, these companies will be hosting 40% of their IoT data on someone else’s cloud.

Employees will hang out together online

2015 was the year where one of the fastest growing business applications was the simple chat room, Slack.

Online communities will continue to grow in popularity for employees. Spending on such will increase by $200 million in 2015, up  30% increase over 2014, IDC predicts.

Employees will form fitness cults

Employees will also head online for fitness with their co-workers — 1 out 5 of all workers will be involved in company-sponsored wellness programs, including company fitness bands, by the end of 2015, says IDC.

Programs, devices and apps that support business/employee/group fitness are ripe to become a big thing.

Fingerprints will replace passwords

With Apple leading the way with its TouchID, 2015 will be the year that all sorts of devices add biometric scanning instead of passwords, IDC predicts.

In 2015 IDC expect that 15% of all mobile devices will have a fingerprint scanner or something akin to it. By 2020, 50% of mobile devices will have that.  And the apps will follow from there.

In a similar vein, more security will be delivered as a service over the Internet, too. 15% of all security will be delivered by an app hosted elsewhere and not installed on the device, IDC says.

Charts and graphs will rule

Big data came alive in 2014, and next year we’ll need better ways to comprehend it.

Visual data discovery tools will the way. This market will grow 2.5 times faster than rest of the business intelligence (BI) market, IDC predicts.

New technologies will arrive that let us continuously analyze streams of data, thanks to the IoT. Streaming of interactive images, video, audio, images to analyze this data will also become a thing.

All told, big data and analytics will be a $125 billion market, IDC says.

Hadoop will get even bigger

Hadoop is a popular technology for storing loads of data using relatively inexpensive hardware.

In December, the first Hadoop startup went public, Hortonworks, and investors ate it up. By 2015, Hadoop will grow into an application platform, where companies write and buy apps that tap into data stored in Hadoop, predicts Forrester.

Forrester calls “Hadooponomics.”

The global market for Hadoop along with related hardware, software, and services is expected to reach $50.2 billion by 2020, Allied Market Research.

3D printers will grow up

Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 98 percent in 2015, followed by a doubling of unit shipments in 2016, Gartner predicts.

3D is already impacting manufacturing, but it will soon be an option for every business that needs to prototype anything, not to mention new areas like medicine.

The global 3D printing market will grow from $2.5B in 2013 to $16.2B by 2018, Canalys predicts.

Cloud computing will become the norm

Cloud computing will still be hot in 2015 and beyond. That’s where companies rent tech over a network instead of buying and installing it themselves.

IDC says that b7 2017, most (60%) of the datacenter tech companies buy will be some form of  cloud computing or another.

Businesses will spend $118 billion in 2015 on cloud, IDC predicts. And that’s only a sliver of the spending.

Much of the $3.89 trillion spent on tech worldwide is at stake, Gartner says.

Health care will become an app

n 2015, hospitals are going to start going digital, IDC predicts.

By 2018, 65% of interactions with health care organizations will be done via mobile devices, and by 2018 70% of them will have apps, offer wearables, do remote health monitoring, and even offer virtual care.

Hospitals will also figure out how to analyze all the data those apps generate to make them more efficient.

Digital marketing budgets will explode

Companies are going to spend more on digital marketing in 2015, Gartner predicts and the bigger the company, the bigger the marketing budget.

Those with revenue of $5 billion reported on average that a digital marketing budget of 11% of revenues. It was 9% for those with revenue between $500 million and $1 billion.

This will be good for all any free apps that depend on ads to pay their bills. By 2017, 15% of B2B companies will use more than 20 data sources to personalize a high-value customer journey, IDC predicts.

Overall, businesses will spend more on technology than ever

Businesses will keep increasing the amount of money they spend on technology. Worldwide spending on information technology will grow 3.8% in 2015 to more than $3.8 trillion both IDC and Gartner predict.

IDC says that emerging markets (particularly China) will grow 7.1% year over year while mature markets will increase at a more modest 1.4% rate.

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