The Tech to Expect in 2021
By: Lance Ulanoff
Tags: Digital, Technology, 2021, Trends, Analysis

The Tech to Expect in 2021

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

Perhaps the most hopeful thing you can do after a year like this is to write about the future. However, imaging what 2021 will be like, even just for technology, is risky. We thought, after all, we had a handle on what to expect in 2020, and we all know how that’s turned out.

Looking ahead this time, I know that technology in 2021 will be informed by the year before like none before it. 2020 remade us. It broke down societal norms and habits and rebuilt them in survival mode as something new, different, and not always worse.

What I’m attempting here is to look at the new year through that prism of calamity. Even as a multitude of vaccines arrive to turn the COVID-19 tide, things will not snap back to “normal” in 2021. We have, in my opinion another 12-to-18 months of living in between worlds, those of the pandemic and post-pandemic. And virtually every category, sector, and innovation I’ll discuss has been altered or even entirely transformed because of the pandemic.

5G in the home

We’ve been talking about 5G for years and even though numerous Android handset manufacturers produced a wide variety of 5G handsets before 2020, the arrival of Apple’s iPhone 12 5G handsets was momentous. In the U.S. at least, this, Verizon’s Ultra-Wide Band expansion, and the T-Mobile/Sprint merger will finally make 5G almost ubiquitous in 2021. But if you’re not leaving your home, how important are 5G mobile broadband speeds to you, anyway?

The answer is not-so-much. 5G though is not just for your phone. Both Verizon and T-Mobile are working on building up their 5G Home Network expertise and technology. These systems differ from traditional cable broadband in that there’s no cable into the home. Instead, providers install a sophisticated 5G antenna/router that can pick up 5G signals near your home (provided there are any) and then the box parses out that signal like a traditional in-home Wi-Fi router.

It’s not just the appeal of cable cutting that could get 5G into the home. Verizon’s fixed 5G, for instance, can reach speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

Home Office forever

Even with a vaccine, millions of us will not be heading back to the office in 2021. Quite a few companies have already announced plans to let the majority of their workforces continue working from home next year.

Companies and executives finally realize that it’s possible to get real work done without them hovering over everyone’s shoulders. I think work culture has probably changed forever and the home office you built to support your new work from home lifestyle will get a lot of use in 2021 and beyond.

The problem, as I see it, is that many people didn’t fully commit to working from home and adopted couches, dinner tables, and rugs as their temporary workspaces. Leaving aside the likely explosion in the chiropractic industry, I think 2021 is the year home office furniture and ergonomic technology see a rapid expansion and innovation tailored to a work-from-home lifestyle. Desks that rise with the touch of a finger are already popular with the stand-while working set, but the look and feel is decidedly office-friendly. Home office furniture companies will introduce a lot more home friendly and flexible styles for all their home office furniture and accessories (more devices for managing multiple screens, much better and cheaper home office chairs), and we will snap them up.

Home work

The work from home revolution is already boosting PC and tablet sales, as is the remote learning explosions While many people are desperate to get their children back into the classroom, that migration may only happen slowly in 2021. In the meantime, PC company fortunes will rise, and the systems will adjust for more home and homework friendly operation.

Already, I’m seeing far more attention paid to the integrated cameras, speakers, and microphones of all these systems. CES 2021 will be a showcase for systems that look ready to leave the home (integrated 5G), but will bring far greater benefit to home office workers and remote-learning students with better screens, cameras, microphones, and speakers.

The theater is home

I love going to the movies, but have not stepped inside a theater since February and I’m not sure I ever will again. The movie industry, which is still (stressfully) churning out product, is slowly but surely accepting the movie theater industry’s awful fate. Last month, Warner Bros. announced that its whole slate of movies would release simultaneously in theaters and on streaming platforms. Wonder Woman: 1984, arguably 2020’s biggest release will arrive on HBOMax on Christmas, a watershed moment for all major releases and a signal to other studios trying to rejigger their release schedules, still holding out for a return to normal in time for, say, Bond: No Time to Die to achieve blockbuster status. I don’t see that happening.

Consumers may miss the theater experience, but they have not stopped consuming massive quantities of TV and movie-studio content on their streaming platforms of choice. The plan for 2021 is to see if they can finally turn their home theaters into more movie theater-like experiences, and they will get some help in 2021 from emerging technology.

Consumers are finding and buying larger and larger 4K TVs at lower and lower prices. That trend will only accelerate in 2021. Just before the end of the year, Samsung finally announced its consumer version of MicroLED TV. Unlike currently LCD, LED, OLED, and Q-OLED, displays, MicroLEDs boil the display technology down to individual LED pixels, packaged into small, box-like groups that still maintain individual pixel/LED control. The benefit is that you can use these blocks to build insanely large and virtually bezel-less displays. Samsung’s smallest MicroLED is 110 inches. Pricing and availability, beyond early next year, has yet to be announced, but I think consumers will happily adopt a bigger-is-better philosophy when it comes to home screen entertainment.

There’s also a good chance that we’ll finally witness the convergence of affordable 8K TVs and some decent 8K content (4K content will be upscaled), which MicoLEDs are not equipped to handle.

Upstart social media

Whether or not everyone accepts it, the presidential election is over, and we’ll have a new President, Joe Biden, next month. Even with that decided, it’s unlikely the country will join hands and sing kumbaya. Nowhere will the divide be more evident than on social media where the fracturing of the American psyche is reflected in our need to gather in our own social media bubbles. It’s not enough to talk among yourselves on Twitter. People want their own social media nations. Platforms like Parler, Discord, Telepath, and Clubhouse will grow in popularity and maintain their dedicated (or invite-only) users, as long as they do not stray from the core ideological values that spawned them.

This isn’t encouraging news for 2021 and one can only hope that more centrist platforms throw open their arms to all voices and help nudge people away from the bleeding edges of groupthink.

Healthcare

People who never thought they’d adopt telemedicine have probably had at least one remote doctor visit in 2020. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a massive 154% increase in telehealth visits in the last week of March 2020, alone. However, that number quickly leveled off to more modest increases over the course of the year.

Still, new public and private policies regarding telehealth, especially health-insurance coverage, mean that the practice is not going away and will probably grow throughout 2021. As a result, technology relating to home diagnostics (CES 2021 could feature a lot of this), even connection to existing wearable health devices, like the Apple Watch, will grow.

Clean Tech

We have vaccines, but we’ll still be obsessed with cleanliness in 2021, including clean tech and tech that can clean our tech. According to market research firm Grand View Research the multi-billion-dollar global ultraviolet disinfection equipment market is expected to grow 19% over the next six years. Fast, effective ways of cleaning both our own mobile technology, anything we come in contact with, and digitally cleansing the air we breathe will be in fashion through at least the first half of 2021.

3D Mesh tech

Not every 2021 tech innovation will be related to our pandemic lifestyle. In 2020, Apple introduced LiDAR scanners to its iPad Pros and iPhone 12 Pros. I think it’s fair to say that consumers do not entirely get this next-gen imaging technology. Their brains turn off as soon as you say, “It means Light Detection and Ranging!” Plus, I’ve only seen a handful of apps take advantage of the sensor’s ability to image an entire 360-degree space in 3D.

In 2021, I expect to see a new collection of apps that focus less on the whiz-bang of the sensor and more on practical uses. And, if Apple is smart, it will use the LiDAR scanners to build the first visual, virtual presence for Siri, something akin to Iron Man’s Jarvis. The scanner’s ability to see every dimension and surface means that whatever entity Apple (and other developers) generate can fully interact with every surface. Also, with Apple’s ARKit occlusion detection technology, the virtual Siri should also act like it’s aware of real humans and maybe even interact with them, as well.

Air drop

The drone industry is about to go through a bit of an adjustment as one of its leading players, DJI, may spend half of 2021 battling the U.S. government over worries that it’s too close to the Chinese government and should not be doing business in the U.S. That flight glitch, though, should have little impact on the expansion of drone delivery efforts, which, naturally fit perfectly in our stay-at-home pandemic world.

Amazon, which got fleet approval in August, the U.S. Postal Service, Google, and others might start drone deliveries to rural and even suburban areas before the end of 2021.

AI, Robotics, and Smart Cars

Despite our anthropological fears, the use of AI and its smarter offspring, Deep Learning, is only going to spread, powering better smart home technology, the arrival, finally, of fully-autonomous fully autonomous electric cars (and not just from Tesla), more intelligent software bots and, I hope first-generation home autonomations.

None of this is written in stone. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that humankind plans while fate laughs its ass off.