The Next Twenty Five Years in ICT

There has been significant economic and technological change over the past three decades. This is still a new industry and established players like IBM have undergone major changes. Household names, like Google, Amazon, eBay, MySpace and YouTube, are less than ten years old. The performance of most information processing activities has changed beyond recognition over the past decade.

Improved performance is manifested in:

Processing power that has grown according to Moore's Law, doubling every eighteen months and storage capacity has shown a similar trend.
The number of inferences that processors can execute is predicted to equal that of the human brain (16K/s) by 2030.
Lighter and more mobile hardware.
Telecommunications investment and digitalisation.
Converging technologies leading to new products and services.
Changing industry scope and structure.
Better and more skilled users, who become the next generation of producers.
Application across almost all industries and markets.

Underpinning these trends are changes and improvements in functionality that have fuelled major quality and productivity gains and have transformed industries, communities and whole areas of social interaction. So what are the trends that will characterise the ICT industry up to 2030? Moreover, what are the implications of these trends for an ICT 2030 Strategy?