Every year, I take a peek forward to see what’s new in consumer technology to help you understand what you could expect to purchase — and what will most likely be a fad — in the next year.
Many of the same “trends” reappear over and over again because, to put it simply, technology takes a long time to develop before the majority of us are willing to purchase it when it becomes available. This holds true for this year as well. Some of the trends that IT businesses are promoting for 2022 are ones you’ve probably heard of before.
An excellent illustration of this is virtual reality, a technology that requires donning goofy-looking equipment and swinging around controllers while playing three-dimensional video games. This is anticipated to be front and centre again this year, having been rebranded as “the metaverse” by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other techies earlier this year.
Another popular area will be the so-called smart home, which is the technology that allows you to manage household equipment by speaking into a speaker or touching a button on a smartphone, among other things. The fact of the matter is that the technology sector has been attempting to get this kind of technology into our homes for more than a decade. This year, it is possible that these items may finally begin to feel like they are useful to possess.
In addition to digital health gear that records our fitness and assists us in diagnosing potential problems, there are many more technologies that appear on this list. Automotive manufacturers have been talking about electric vehicles for a long time. Now they are starting to go through with their plans to reach a national objective of phasing out the manufacturing of gas-powered vehicles by 2030.
It has been more than a decade since technologists dreamt of a day when our virtual lives will be as significant in comparison to our physical ones. As a consequence, we would spend a significant amount of time communicating with our friends and coworkers in virtual space, and as a result, we would spend money on costumes and stuff for our digital avatars.
What you just said seems like something out of a science fiction film. In the second year of the epidemic, a critical mass of things came together, Mr. Ball said, which made the metaverse more realistic and relatable.
Furthermore, many of us were ready to spend a lot of money on our digital identities. Thousands of investors acquired nonfungible tokens (also known as nonfungible coins), which are one-of-a-kind digital items that can only be purchased using cryptocurrencies. Eminem and other investors put hundreds of thousands of dollars into a virtual yacht club in order to become members.
This year will bring even more surprises. Apple has said that it will introduce its version of a virtual reality headset, which will be designed to appear like a pair of ski goggles and will depend on a second computer device that is worn somewhere else on the body for processing power. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Google has also been working on virtual reality goods for many years, while Microsoft has made a virtual reality gear available to corporations and government organisations for a limited time.
Depending on what goods are developed and who purchases them, the metaverse might yet prove to be a passing craze. The fear of Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst for the consulting company Creative Strategies, is that it will become a mirror of the fortunate few who can afford to nurture their digital selves well is a source of concern for her.
During the previous several years, smart home technologies such as internet-connected thermostats, door locks, and robotic vacuum cleaners have made significant strides forward. They grew more inexpensive and more reliable when used with digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Apple’s Siri, among others.
Despite this, the smart home has remained a tangled mess for the most part. Many smart home items were found to be incompatible with other types of technology. Some door locks, for example, were only compatible with Apple phones and not with Android phones; some thermostats could only be controlled by speaking to Google Assistant rather than Siri; and so on.
Fitness trackers such as the Apple Watch and Fitbit, which measure our activities and heart rate, continue to gain in popularity. Consequently, tech firms are experimenting with more compact wearable gadgets that collect more detailed information about our health this year.
One of Oura’s latest product launches is a new iteration of its Oura Ring, which is packed with sensors that measure parameters such as body temperature and help the wearer to precisely forecast menstrual cycles. A similar ring was revealed this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas by Movano, a health technology start-up that knits together data about your heart rate, temperature, and other parameters to notify a wearer about probable chronic conditions.
As a result, major automobile manufacturers are promoting their electric vehicles, particularly at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week. Ford Motor Company stated on Tuesday that it intends to boost manufacturing of its F-150 Lightning electrified pickup truck. General Motors is to introduce a battery-powered version of its Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck later this week, according to reports. Other automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz, have publicly stated their intentions to introduce electric vehicles in the next years.
Even though there is a lot of marketing hoopla around electric vehicles, Ms. Milanesi believes that those of us searching for battery-powered vehicles this year will still go toward Tesla, according to her. This is due to the fact that solar energy and charging facilities for electric vehicles have not yet been widely deployed, particularly in more remote sections of the country. Tesla has a leg up on the competition since it has been building out charging stations for years, according to her.
