Tech trends for 2019: foldable phones, 5G, cashierless retail, privacy legislation, autonomous delivery wagons, IoT edge computing, and more
Hi Everyone. Happy 2019. Mark Spoonauer / Tom's Guide : The Head of CES Sounds Off on Trump Tariffs, Facebook and Biggest 2019 Trends Rob Marvin / PCMag : The 10 Worst Tech Trends of 2018 Amy Webb / Barron's Online : 3 Tech Trends to Watch in 2019 Ana Alexandre / Cointelegraph.com News : Fred Wilson: Crypto No Safe Haven in 2019, Investors More Wary of Startup Sector Ed Oswald / Digital Trends : 5 tech trends to watch in 2019 (and a reality check on last year's picks) Tweets: Megan Quinn / @msquinn : “Thought Pokémon Go was big? Wait until Niantic, the company behind the augmented-reality gaming phenomenon, releases its next project, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite...it's likely to be unmissable.” Let's go @NianticLabs! http://www.wsj.com/... Lars Erik Ruud / @lars_ruud : The new year will bring 5G to more places, enabling AI to move from the cloud to cores..making it even more useful for all of us. And maybe Alexa will learn norwegian...? https://www.wsj.com/... Priyanka Mogul / @priyankamogul : “From delivery wagons and foldable phones to privacy crackdowns and corporate health tracking, the coming year will make good on some of the #tech industry's biggest promises.” Via @JoannaStern and @pierce. https://www.wsj.com/... Yun-Hee Kim / @yunheekim22 : Tech trends to watch in 2019: 5G, foldable phones, an epic streaming service from Disney, cashier-less stores and a new look for iPhones @JoannaStern @pierce https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This New Year's roundup lands on a specific anxiety: Mary Meeker's mid-2018 internet trends showed smartphone shipments stagnating while time online kept rising, so the 2019 list leans on new hardware form factors (foldables, 5G) and new surfaces (cashierless retail, autonomous delivery wagons) to restart growth. The accompanying commentary is defensive in tone — CES leadership sounding off on Trump tariffs and Facebook, and Fred Wilson telling investors crypto is no safe haven and startup caution is warranted.
First-order effects
- Facebook enters 2019 with privacy legislation named a key regulatory trend of the year and with CES commentary singling the company out, putting it at the center of the policy conversation before the year begins.
- Startup investors begin 2019 in a warier posture after Wilson's public warning, tightening the funding environment for speculative sectors like crypto.
Second-order effects
- With smartphone shipments flat per the Meeker data, device makers are pushed toward foldable screens and 5G as the differentiation levers, raising the cost floor for staying competitive in handsets.
- Retailers face pressure to match cashierless checkout as it moves from experiment to expected trend, and logistics players must weigh autonomous delivery wagons against last-mile labor costs.
Third-order effects
- The year-end look back at 2019 shows the predicted consumer and regulatory friction materializing as antitrust investigations and protests against big companies — suggesting privacy forecasts were the leading edge of a broader regulatory turn.
- By the 2023 edition of the same predictions column, the agenda had rotated to AI integration, Big Tech belt tightening, and less talk of crypto, indicating these annual lists track a structural shift toward fewer, more regulated platforms rather than any single year's gadget bets.
The trend: Annual tech-forecast roundups increasingly function as a barometer of the industry's power shift, cycling through gadget bets each year while the durable story underneath moves from growth-at-all-costs toward regulation and consolidation.