Emerging tech adoption slows amid global uncertainty
GlobalData's Tech Sentiment Polls Q1 2025 survey reveals that industry respondents now believe that six out of seven of the most significant emerging technologies will take longer to disrupt their sectors or may not at all than they previously had.
From Q4 2024 Q1 2025, the share of respondents indicating that their sector is already being disrupted by cybersecurity fell from 61% to 59% (-2pp), cloud computing from 61% to 59% (-6pp), artificial intelligence 53% to 49% (-4pp), the internet of things 48% to 44% (-4pp), robotics from 38% to 33% (-5pp) and augmented reality from 23% to 22% (-1pp). Only the metaverse saw a rise in respondents who believe that it is already disrupting sectors, although nearly half (45%) of the 354 respondents believe it never will.
Over the same period, the proportion of respondents indicating that their sector will be disrupted at some point in the next decade or not at all by cybersecurity rose from 38% to 41% (+3pp), from 38% to 47% (+9pp) for cloud computing, from 47% to 52% for artificial intelligence (+5pp), from 52% to 56% for the internet of things (+4pp), from 62% to 67% (+5pp) for robotics and from 77% to 80% (+3pp) for augmented reality. The metaverse saw a fall from 84% to 83%.
While the report suggests no reasons for this tempering of expectations, the survey was carried out between January and March this year, aligning with the first two and a half months of the new Trump administration in the US and the global uncertainty that has brought. An upending of the global trade system via a sweeping, stringent and scattergun tariffs agenda along with a lack of clarity about the US' intentions in relation to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine are two aspects of the administration giving businesses pause for thought.
Despite this, survey respondents remain buoyant about the overall value of the technologies. A huge 91% believe that robotics will live up to all of its hype or that it has a use, 88% for cybersecurity, 89% for artificial intelligence, 87% for cloud computing, 74% for augmented reality and 71% for the internet of things. Only 26% believe as much for the metaverse, however, with 60% believing it is all hype and no substance.
"Emerging tech adoption slows amid global uncertainty" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
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