What Industries Will Be In High Demand In 2022?

Article

Life is increasingly accelerating and new challenges are dictating changes in the technology world, shedding light on industries that are becoming increasingly in demand. Let’s take a look at some of the latest trends leading industries this year.  

Trend # 1. Rise of the creator economy

More and more routine tasks are being automated, so people have more time for creativity. Now we are already seeing great growth in the creator economy - on the one hand, there are more and more people creating digital content: bloggers, influencers, and creatives. On the other hand, there are many applications and platforms that allow you to broadcast this content.  

Two more components are important factors in the development of the creator economy: advertisers willing to pay for content and a low entry threshold. Since October 2020, $800 million has been invested in creator economy startups and this trend will continue to grow. 

Trend # 2. The Metaverse

In next year we will see a lot of attempts to create products for places-universes. The trend set by Mark Zuckerberg has already been picked up, companies are starting to create AR and VR projects for the metaverses, so in 2022 we will see a strong increase in the number of such products. It’s not a fact that wow-startups will appear in this niche, but there will definitely be a lot of attempts. 

Trend # 3 Deep Tech Technologies  

The quantum industry is just emerging, next year we expect the first prototypes of quantum processors on four platforms: superconductors, atoms, ions, and photons. This suggests that it is time for businesses to get involved in pilot projects because the time when it was possible to evaluate quanta as an exclusively fundamental science has passed.  

By the time powerful computers appear, companies should be ready to implement them. for this, it is already necessary to move on to solving industrial problems using quantum and quantum-inspired algorithms. 

In 2022 we will see an increase in interest in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quants, both from investors and from businesses. If many people called the 2000s the era of mobile computing, and the 2010s - the cloud, then the 2020s are more often associated with the deep tech industry. 

Trend # 4. Ecosystems

Now in almost all industries, there are recognized leaders who, even during a prolonged period of economic recession, invest billions in order to finally overtake competitors and become monopolists. The largest of them are building ecosystems of various sizes, and creating a startup to sell into such an ecosystem may be one of the most promising strategies in 2022. For example, in the banking market, leaders compete with the quantity and quality of non-financial services, because it is already difficult to compete with financial services, all of them basically have similar core functionality and tariffs. 

Trend # 5. Custom Software Development  

Businesses are on the crest of a wave of interest in developing their own digital solutions. This can explain the fact that the largest players in those industries where digitalization gives or has given the maximum effect are entering the IT market: banks, insurance, retail, transport & tourism. Next year, the tendency for non-core companies to create their own solutions and then enter the market with them will continue, which will significantly change the picture of the industry and compete with traditional IT companies. 

Pressure from new competitors and a change in the structure of demand, which has finally shifted towards complex business solutions, has led to fewer integrators in the traditional form, and suppliers of software solution products are becoming more and more in demand. 

Trend # 6. EdTech 

In the post-pandemic era, the education segment is among the leaders in terms of growth rate. It is expected that in the coming years there will be 97 million new digital jobs, and the global education market will grow from $8.4 billion in 2020 to $33.2 billion in 2025. New learning formats will continue to develop: microlearning in mobile applications, courses in TikTok, and other formats for gaining knowledge in portions of 30-40 seconds. There will be a growing demand for zero coding training for personal purposes and demand for this expertise from small businesses. However, the demand for professional developers will not go anywhere. 

Trend # 7. SportTech

In 2021, companies that wanted to be successful in the fitness tech market had to rethink and adapt their solutions to home use: Peloton released the Peloton Guide, the most accessible product in the history of the company, which includes access to online training and a heart rate monitor. Tempo introduced Tempo Move, a set of weights and a smart smartphone stand for home workouts. Freeletics launched the Freeletics STÆDIUM, a smart camera set-top box. That is, in order to increase the number of customers, market leaders develop products with a low price, which do not take up much space and fit into the home environment. 

 In 2022, we will see how fitness Tech will become the new norm. 

It is already clear that quarantines in one form or another will not soon disappear from our lives, which means that home workouts will also remain in trend. And here the advantage will be for solutions that use the gadgets that the user already has: these are TV boxes with a smart camera and AI applications that rely on the readings of smartphone sensors. 

Thanks to artificial intelligence in fitness, training will become even more personalized: monitoring the heart rate and execution technique allows the program to eliminate traumatic exercises and more accurately select the load for a particular person. And the development of specialized online platforms for instructors, where they can conveniently gather groups, manage class schedules and accept payments, will facilitate the fight against physical inactivity and make sports more accessible. 

Trend # 8. Remote services

Development of projects for the remote format of receiving almost any service. Niche services that are not yet fully digitalized, and for which there is still free space in large ecosystems, will be in high demand. This could be anything from in-home massage to automatic debt collection. 

Trend # 9 Web 3.0.  

The main idea of Web 3.0 is the transparency and decentralization of the Internet and user data. Not only startups are talking about the Internet of a new era, but also, for example, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who invested in Bluesky, which will develop a new decentralized standard for social networks. Now we are already seeing the development of applications based on blockchain technology, when user data is not stored on the servers of specific companies and is decentralized. 

Trend # 10. MedTech & HRTech 

MedTech is another promising industry. Over the past couple of years, health has become a concern even for those who are not used to thinking about it. The importance of convenience and safety in healthcare has grown. 

It is also worth paying attention to the HR-Tech market. Hiring is becoming increasingly difficult, finding valuable talent takes a lot of time and company resources, so there is great potential for process automation. You can create products for onboarding and staff training, solutions for tracking employee progress, and building personal grades. 

Summary  

Business success lies not in choosing the right niche, but in matching the product to the chosen market. Having a professional and reliable IT strategic partner can help businesses with choosing the right tools, methodologies for software development.