Ericsson takes a peek into the crystal ball to predict what will be hot for 2019-- a year promising more convenience through increasingly capable virtual assistants, emotion-reading AI and even means to appear in two places, at the same time!

To work out what exactly will be huge next year, Ericsson held an online survey on October 2018 of 5097 "advanced" internet users in a number of cities, namely Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. It also makes use of 2017-2018 survey data from the Ericsson ConsumerLab analytical platform, with data from 72067 smartphone users in 50 countries. Anyway, here are the trends:

VR gaming and head mounted displays (HMDs) see rapid innovation in a "stuttering" market, Futuresource reports, with VR games expected to grow by 220% in 2018 amid a range of challenges and a turbulent hype cycle.

“Mass market uptake is going to be gradual, but it is going to happen,” the analyst says, “and as the VR sector moves forward from a relatively low base, content will continue to evolve, the user experience will improve and the investment threshold for consumers will continue to fall. By the end of 2018, VR games content will have achieved a global sales value of $1.3 billion, setting it on a steady course for success.”

Dominating the VR games market are full games sales and downloaded content. Steam and Oculus lead the market, consolidating PC VR space and building a presence in mobile VR. PlayStation VR is the only option when it comes to gems consoles, since Microsoft has walked back on a previous decision to bring VR capability to Xbox One while Nintendo has no plans for the field as yet (despite some patents suggesting the Switch has some provision for VR).

The current gaming laptop arena is held a comfortable balance between Asus and MSI-- but things are about to change, DigiTimes reports, as big notebook vendors are set to enter the lucrative, high-margin market.

"Industry sources" tell the news website the likes of HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo are "aggressively" taking on the gaming market with low-price promotion campaigns in various regions, as well as new model roll outs and overall brand strengthening efforts. The vendors are also sponsoring gaming teams and hosting events in order to further promote sales, a strategy from the playbook of both Asus and MSI.

Gartner reports global device-- PCs, tablets and mobile phones-- shipments are set to total 2.28 billion in 2018, an increase of just 0.9%, with PC and tablet shipments dropping by -1.2% and mobile phones growing by 1.4%.

"The PC market is still hindered by the undersupply of the DRAM market for all of 2018, due to the lack of new wafer capacity coming online. As a result, PC vendors will continue to increase their prices throughout 2018," the analyst points out. "Larger screens and more graphic boards also mean rising costs, adding to the bill of hardware materials for businesses and household buyers."