Intelligent machines and self-teaching computers will open up exciting prospects for the electronics industry.

The idea of thinking, or even feeling, machines was long merely a vision of science-fiction authors. But thanks to rapid developments in semiconductors and new ideas for the programming of self-teaching algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is today a real market, opening up exciting prospects for businesses.

According to management consultants McKinsey, the global market for AI-based services, software and hardware is set to grow by as much as 25 per cent a year, and is projected to be worth USD 130 billion by 2025. Investment in AI is therefore booming, as the survey “Artificial Intelligence: the next digital frontier” by the McKinsey Global Institute affirms. It reports that, in the last year, businesses – primarily major tech corporations such as Google and Amazon – spent as much as USD 27 billion on in-house research and development in the field of intelligent robots and self-teaching computers. A further USD 12 billion was invested in AI in 2016 externally – that is, by private equity companies, by risk capital funds, or through mergers and acquisitions. This amounted in total to some USD 39 billion – triple the volume seen in 2013. Most current external investments (about 60 per cent) is flowing into machine learning (totalling as much as USD 7 billion). Other major areas of investment include image recognition (USD 2.5 to 3.5 billion) and voice recognition (USD 600 to 900 million).

Intelligent machines and self-teaching computers are opening up new market opportunities in the electronics industry. Market analyst TrendForce predicts that global revenues from chip sales will increase by 3.1 per cent a year between 2018 and 2022. It is not just the demand for processors that is rising, however; applications of AI are also driving new solutions in electronics fields such as sensor technology, hardware accelerators and digital storage media. Market research organisation marketsandmarkets, for example, forecasts a rise from USD 2.35 billion in 2017 to USD 9.68 billion by 2023 – among other reasons as a result of big data, the Internet of Things, and applications relating to Artificial Intelligence. The creation of AI-based services is also increasing demand for higher-performance network infrastructures, data centres and server systems.

AI is thus a vital market for the electronics industry as well. With our semiconductor solutions, experienced experts and extensive partner network, we will be glad to help you develop exciting new products.

The post From pure fiction to a real market opportunity appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.