FUTURE THINKING TREND DRIVERS
Impact & Influences
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A report by Euromonitor (2017) highlights how regions such as Asia Pacific are driving the constant need for connectivity more than any other regions. Home to the world's most urban population, lower-priced digital networks and devices have caused China to rise as the first mobilecentric nation. (Forbes, 2017) A nation turning to their smartphones and social channels such as Wechat for their purchases, the nation is currently one step ahead of regions such as the UK and the US who currently feel more comfortable purchasing from larger digital devices such as laptops. China is an example of where the rest of the world may head within the future. However, it needs to be taken into account that consumer attitudes differ by region and therefore it may take time for different consumers to accustom to the way China lives. Finally, environmental shifts and pressures for
the world to become more sustainable have driven a need for products and tasks to be completed with fewer materials in order to protect the environment. This has promoted the shift from things being physical to digital (Euromonitor, 2017) However, whilst products such as smartphones allows consumers to complete a variety of tasks within one handset, a recent report by MarketWatch (2017) highlights the vast carbon footprint constant manufacturing of Apple iPhone devices has on the environment. In order to establish whether being able to carry out multiple tasks on one devices, or actually owning multiple products would be more sustainable, further research would need to be carried out.
Fig.2
ing economy encourages consumers to use less resources by sharing with one and other. One example of this is ridesharing apps such as Lyft, which encourages people to share lifts rather than travel separately. This is expected to have a huge positive effect on this environment. However, due to the personal element of technology such as mobile phones it is unlikely that the same attitude will be put towards these devices, which in turn does not solve the problem of sustainability.
Another way in which environmental shifts have inspired technology is by the creation of the sharing economy. The shar-
FUTURE THINKING: DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY SOPHIE OTTEWELL
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