Market Overview

With accelerated development of information technologies (IT), digital transformation that utilizes such technologies has been in the spotlight. IT utilization at user companies is supported by IT vendors and system integrators. This research has focused on the technologies that gained attention of IT vendors and has disclosed the short-term and middle-to-long term perspectives on the implementation and commercialization of such promising technologies and how they could be utilized in organizations.

When asked to IT vendors about which of cutting-edge technologies that they focused on, the responses were “AI,” “Cross Reality (XR), i.e., AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality), MR (Mixed Reality),” “Metaverse,” “quantum computer,” and “blockchain.”
These technologies seemed to be prioritized for R&D and dealt with for industrialization at each of IT vendors. Attention especially to generative AI was high.

Noteworthy Topics

Tackling Efforts Vary by Technology

How IT vendors tackle vary by which of cutting-edge technology they focus on.
As for AI (excluding generative AI), many solutions have put to practical use as applications have been well established, such as appearance inspection and deterioration diagnosis via image recognition, entry/exit management and security through face recognition, call-center task support by means of voice recognition, and to AI-OCR.
Quantum computers, on the other hand, need a long-term perspective for implementation, as indicated in the governmental roadmap aiming the full-scale use in around 2030.
XR are already available, but their evolution involving devices and various hardware is still in halfway. The trial for work applications has just begun, such as simulation or evaluation for products and spaces, maintenance inspections and training for manufacturing and construction,

Future Outlook

For the period needed to be studied to aim commercialization, advanced technologies in many cases are categorized into short-term (0 to 2 years) or middle-to-long term (3 to 5 years or more) until implementation.
Those technologies that can be implemented within short period of time are AI-related (the ones that have already been commercialized such as image recognition, chat bot, etc. and machine learning), IoT, 5G, and cloud. IT vendors can purchase and use those that have already been released as products and services.
Those technologies that need middle-to-long term development are XR, metaverse, quantum computer, Web3, etc. This research discovered that the technology management division or R&D division at IT vendors were ready to deem industrialization for these technologies including their consideration on application methods and overseas research. Though whether to allow the use of ChatGPT is a short-term issue, generative AI still has room to consider its future technological potential which is changing and is still uncertain under rapid development so that it needs middle-to-long term period to tackle.

Research Outline