The market dynamics that impact our strategy

Our world and our markets are changing faster than ever. As these changes largely impact our customers’ businesses as well as ours, it is key to understand today’s market dynamics and take them into account when implementing our strategy and monitoring progress. More than that, we considered the prevailing market dynamics when we defined our new mission statement and strategy three years ago and continue to take these into account as the topics evolve and we step up our strategy.

Technological as well as global socio-economic trends affect our roadmap for the future:

Technological trends

The rapidly accelerating pace of digitization

While digitization was already high on the agendas of most organizations, the covid-19 pandemic accelerated the paradigm shift towards digitization and servitization of the economy in 2020. In the heat of the crisis, operating digitally was the only way to stay in business. Digital services, remote working and e-commerce are now here to stay. Trends that are bound to gain importance in the coming years include:

Internet of Things (IoT) – sensors

IoT solutions have reached maturity. Used in a growing number of applications in every industry, they now deliver tangible business benefits, from creating new data sources to providing real-time performance updates.

61%
of enterprises show a high degree of IoT maturity
(source: Gartner, 2019)

Cloud computing

Cloud computing has been around for many years now. Today, almost everything is connected to the cloud in one way or another. According to Gartner, the proportion of IT spending that is shifting to the cloud will increase in the aftermath of the covid-19 crisis.

14.2%
of the total global enterprise IT budget will be spent on cloud computing in 2024, up from 9.1% in 2020
(source: Gartner, November 2020)

Analytics and AI

Leading organizations aim to become data driven as a way to accelerate business. Technologies like AI, machine learning and natural language processing have huge disruptive power, offering intelligence that may well surpass human insight.

80%
of consumer or industrial products containing electronics will perform on-device analysis by 2025
(source: Gartner, 100 data and analytics predictions through 2024)

Security and data protection

In today’s digital, increasingly connected society, systems, networks and data must be protected from the rapidly accelerating threat of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, while also complying with data protection regulations.

USD
3.9 million
is the average cost of a data breach
(source: IBM, 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report)

Socio-economic trends

Everything comes as a service

The advent of the cloud triggered a new business model: a rising number of services and applications are now available as a service, i.e. on demand over the internet, instead of delivered using on-premise hardware and software. Businesses are adopting the on-demand offering as it allows them to acquire new technology quickly with fewer up-front costs.

USD
345 billion
will be the value of the as-a-service market by 2026
(source: Research Insights)

The shortening product life cycle

With the rapid advancement of technology and globalization and with the resulting tighter competition, product life cycles have been shortening significantly over the past few years. As a result, companies are under constant pressure to rapidly develop and launch new products and optimize revenue and profit.

50%
of annual company revenues are derived from new products launched within the past 3 years

The rise of emerging economies

By 2050, up to six of what are currently known as emerging nations could be among the seven largest economies in the world, according to projections by PwC and others. Among them is China, which is steadily assuming a new role at the epicenter of global technology and innovation.

25%
of the world’s largest companies is from emerging markets today (vs. 4% in 1995)
(source: www.agility.com)

The quest for sustainability

‘Creating a more sustainable world’ – and balancing that quest with economic interests – may well be one of the biggest challenges of today’s society.

X 3
Human consumption of the earth’s natural resources more than tripled between 1970 and 2015 and is expected to more than double between now and 2050.
(source: ‘The World Counts’)

Market dynamics stories