Tech predictions for 2022
And other tech / media / audio news.
👋 Welcome to FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest.
Sending this edition a day later than the usual schedule due to my changed plans for this week, just wanted to acknowledge it. Promise will keep to regular programming from now on.
In this edition
2022 tech predictions
Year 2021 in emojis
Best of CES 2022
Here is what I think might happen in 2022
I spent the last few days reading technology predicitons for this year: The Guardian, WSJ, NY Times, Fast Company, The Verge, Platformer, CNET.
The New York Times also published a piece I liked and recommend reading if you are still deciding on New Year's resolutions: Four Resolutions for a Healthier Tech Life in 2022.
OK, and here are my predictions:
The global chip shortage will continue into 2023. OK, it isn’t hard to make this prediction, plus the issue still keeps getting worse - New Scientist reported a fire at a factory owned by the sole provider of a vital technology used to manufacture computer chips could exacerbate an already serious global shortage of semiconductors used in everything from phones to cars.
The European Union will move forward on the two legislations every Big Tech company in Silicon Valley is opposing - Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA).
There will be another round of Big Tech CEOs testifying before the US Congress. The social media networks are always a good target but the landscape is changing and we have seen founders exit their companies.
At the end of 2022, more than 40% of new sold cars in Europe will be EVs. In November last year, plug-in cars captured 26% market share.
Fintech will continue to be the biggest investment sector for startups in Europe. Out of $120 billion invested in European startups in 2021, fintech captured more than $21 billion.
AR glasses will hit the market, possibly an early version from Apple aimed at developers to start developing apps for them. This is a little bit of wishful thinking, the technology is stil far from being fit for consumers.
Metaverse will remain non-existent and people will think it’s just VR games. Yes, for a couple of years it will mostly be VR games and not the promised virtual society.
More high-profile people will want to get their salaries in crypto. We have already seen a couple of politicians announce something like this in 2021 (famously, NYC’s new mayor).
Building a smart home will get easier and start to make sense thanks to Matter, a new interoperability standard.
QR codes are here to stay. Most people might have come across them in restaurants. The problem is thinking it’s OK to send people to a PDF version of the menu or a desktop destination. QR codes are mobile-only so everyone using them should be thinking about users holding their smartphones when visiting the destination written in the code.
Below find some new stories and some of from the end of last year I thought are worth sharing even today. Almost forgot, have a better 2022 than 2021 was.
👻 The Year in Emojis. No.1: 😂. No.2: ❤️. No.3: 🤣. [NYT]
📈 TikTok got more traffic than Google in 2021. [Gizmodo]
👀 21 things that happened for the first time in 2021. This is a great list. Trust me, at least skimm through it. [NYT]
🔋 Novel lithium-metal batteries will drive the switch to electric cars. A fascinating read on possible future batteries. [MIT Tech Review]
👏 Swedish startup Northvolt assembled its first battery cell in a new gigafactory in northern Sweden. That makes it the first European company to design and manufacture a battery on the continent. [Reuters]
🤨 The worst technology of 2021: Face filters, billionaires in space, and home-buying algorithms. A good list of bad things. [MIT Tech Review]
🙃 Best of CES 2022: new tech that’s practical, innovative or just plain crazy. [WSJ]
🚗 Tesla rival Lucid plans to launch in Europe this year. [CNBC]
💰 Apple becomes first company to hit $3 trillion market value. [NYT]
🕳️ The 7 most overhyped trends of 2022. [FC]
📈 The most engaging stories of 2021. [Chartbeat]
😮 A massive study suggests partisan news sites are not to be blamed for polarization. [NiemanLab]
📺 Netflix launched its own online news site about its content - Tudum. Yes, very meta. [THR]
🤔 Analysts predict weekly streaming shows to win over binge show drops. [CB]
🆕 Ben Smith (NYT media columnist) is leaving the media outlet to start a new global news organization with Justin B. Smith (ex-CEO Bloomberg Media). [NYT]
⚽ NYT is (finally) buying The Athletic. The online sports news outlet with 1.2 million subscriptions was sold in an all-cash deal valued at $550 million. [NiemanLab]
🇺🇸 Axios CEO Jim VandeHei unveiled a manifesto for Axios Local. [Axios]
1️⃣ The year 2021 in subscriptions and memberships
2️⃣ Using the MVP principle to launch your reader revenue news product
3️⃣ Learnings on the eternal problem of finding and retaining tech talent
4️⃣ Journalists pay a price for speaking truth to power
📬 Get The Fix newsletter >
🎛️ Pacific Content published their annual podcast predictions for 2022. (Part 1, part 2)
🎧 NPR is expanding subscriber-only content on NPR+. Interesting for a public broadcaster. [Axios]
⏩ A new study proved that podcasting is a long game, successful podcasters are 7.7 times more likely to have published over 100 episodes. [IP]
😟 Programmatic podcast ads are getting more popular and as with all new tech, there are problems. Last year, an ad for the TV show The Sex Lives of College Girls popped up on an American Public Media (APM) podcast it shouldn’t have been approved for: a children’s show. [The Verge]
📲 Spotify introduces call-to-action cards for podcast ads. US-only for now. [SN]
✨ More than 400,000 sound recordings went into the public domain in the US. [DL]
❓ Poll: What are you looking forward in 2022?
🙌 Thanks. I used HandyPolls to create this poll (instructions).
Last poll results: What do you consider the biggest audio story of 2021? 24% chose Podcast consumption is growing globally; 15% chose equally these other three answers: Paid podcast push by Apple & Spotify, Audio articles are coming, Podcast scandals (Gimlet, NYT Caliphate).
🙏 And big thanks to Celine Bijleveld who helped me edit this newsletter. You can follow her on Substack here.