Predictions for 2020 by HBS Professors (podcast link)
- Political
- There will be a large gap between electoral and popular votes that strikes public concerns.
- President Trump will do a re-election as the economic benchmarks are strong
- Prince William will be the last king, leading to the dismantling of British Royal Family.
- Society
- Unemployment will continue to rise, along with the salary rate.
- Many states will approve sport bets
- Technology
- Alphabet will mark a significant change in capital allocation strategy: a very large acquisition, a large special dividend or a large buy-back program.
- Hearables will blossom: not only work for music listening but also collecting health data. Apple will invest in it to create an edge for the popular AirPod.
- Huawei will be the no.1 smartphone manufacturing in the world till the end of 2020 with more stable growth & more astonishing updates than Samsung.
- China will be the leading AI center due to cheap labour cost.
- There will be prominent deep- fake scandals
- Face-recognition will be put in many more applications, which leads to security concerns?
- Retail
- Walmart will make a big push into healthcare, after opening a primary care center
- Amazon will double down on brick-and-mortar store buy acquiring one player (ex: Target) as 2020 will be the first year E-commerce grow less than 10%
- EVs: Electric cars will hit the tipping point when everyone can earn one: mass-price & easier access to charging station
6. Travel Industry: There will be some large mergers here. Ex: Google buy some OTAs
7. Entertainment
- Apple TV+ will not bring impressive growth.
- (Looking back why Apple did not buy Netflix) Maybe the reason lied in regulatory obstacles
- Climate change: Governments over the world will pay more attention towards climate change, after Australia’s incidents
Huy Luu's business blog 