Articles that describe upcoming global trends and its impact towards businesses.

Healthy vinegar-based drinks

In the last two years, we are experiencing a megatrend for healthy living, which not only includes healthy eating but also healthy drinking. Vinegar-based drinks have risen in popularity – with large numbers of people now talking about the health benefits of consuming apple cider vinegar every day.

In the past, vinegar has been used as food preservative and part of cooking recipes. Distilled white vinegar is still commonly used for pickling and many cooking recipes in Japan use sweetened rice wine vinegar or mirin.

Many believe that vinegar has some health benefits such as controlling blood sugar levels and improving metabolism which can help with weight loss. However, due to its acidic nature, vinegar might also have some negative side effects when consumed too much. Dentists have said that vinegars could inflict damage to tooth enamel which could cause dental erosion. Furthermore, in some cases vinegar could also cause indigestion.

As a result, many people dilute vinegar with juice, water, spices, honey, and herbs to reduce its acidity and improve its flavour, creating healthy vinegar-based drinks.

Why is this interesting?

Drinking vinegar for its health benefits is not new. However, ready-to-drink vinegar-based drinks are. With the rising awareness about healthy living and the popularity of vinegar-based drinks, the market is open to new, palatable, convenient and easy to consume formats.

Contact Rob to know more about our experience in this space.

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Global trends 2019 – Autonomous ride-sharing

It’s an exciting time in the world of car manufacturing and mobility.  Car makers worldwide have been gradually shifting direction to keep up with technological development and emerging consumer sentiment. Many in the automotive supply chain have been racing to develop autonomous driving features to make the drive-less car a future reality. The market size for autonomous driving features is predicted to grow up to 26 billion USD in 2025. It may be that the realization of fully drive-less car is not too far ahead.

We believe that the future of mobility is not to own an autonomous vehicle, but rather we see a movement towards autonomous ride-sharing communities with greater flexibility.

Worldwide car sales continue to slow down (declining by 7.2% from 2017 to 2018), whilst ride-sharing services are gaining in popularity each year with companies such as Uber and Lyft as market leaders. From Uber alone, global gross booking for ride-sharing services reached 14.17 billion USD in 2018. Furthermore, the ride-sharing industry is expected to grow from 15 billion USD in 2014 up to 335 billion USD in 2025. In the not so distant future, fewer people will choose to own a car and more will opt-in for ride-sharing services.

Why is this interesting?

This trend will not only impact auto-makers, but will also force ride-sharing providers such as Uber and Lyft to compete. Competition and profitability will be a tension within the ride-sharing service providers, but predictions are that after the initial development costs, the commercial viability for the ride-sharing service providers is positive.

To find out more about our experience in the mobility industry, please contact Dam.

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Global trends 2019 – Vehicle to everything (V2X)

Connected technology is getting into more and more aspects of today’s living. After home automation, vehicle-to-everything is the next emerging trend to watch.  

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) is paving the way for connected cars and future fully automated driving. It is the future of the transportation communication system in which all vehicles and infrastructure interconnect with each other – traffic flow, motor vehicles, and other road users. V2X enables better automated piloting and intelligent traffic control by providing real-time information on speed, route, acceleration, and other driving factors.

There are two main benefits to expect:

  1. Accident-free driving

V2X technologies enable vehicles to automatically pass along messages regarding road conditions, traffic flow and obstacles, before they appear in the driver’s visual range.

  1. More efficient transportation

V2X technologies help drivers or automated vehicles to optimise speed and reduce fuel wastage. As vehicles are connected to the transportation infrastructure, they can give suggestions to drivers to re-route in case of traffic, reducing congestion and enhancing the travel experience.

Why is this interesting?

To make V2X a reality, large numbers of connected devices and good content caching technologies are needed. But huge technology-driven innovations are still necessary to create fully V2X capable vehicles.  

The transition period for V2X vehicles could be a challenge, as V2X vehicles will need to co-exist with non-V2X vehicles until consumers are fully confident and comfortable with the technology.

Auto-makers need to keep operations running smoothly while driving innovations in ways that still engage and excite their consumers.

If you’d like to know more about future mobility trends, please contact Dam.

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Global Trends 2019 – Personalized healthcare for the future

The possibilities of personalization are endless. Nowadays, almost everything can be tailored to satisfy the customer’s preference and needs more effectively. From e-commerce solutions to hospitality businesses, you can easily encounter personalization. And the same can also be applied to healthcare solutions. We believe that personalized healthcare will be made possible in the not so distant future. 

According to the NIGMS, the variations in the human genome account for approximately 0.001% of each person’s DNA. It may not sound a lot, but these variations contribute to differences in our appearance, health, and also our ability to respond to certain medicines.

Moreover, daily routines and lifestyle habits also vary from one individual to another. Some of us might exercise once or twice a week and some might prefer to eat a healthy diet. Some pursue unhealthy lifestyle choices in the diets they eat or amounts of alcohol or tobacco consumed.

Based on these factors, we can see that our nutritional and other healthcare treatment needs are different from one another.  We believe that in the near future, healthcare treatments will be tailored specifically to fit our genome variations and lifestyles. Rather than being based on one-size-fits-all solutions, personalized treatment is tipped to be the next great healthcare breakthrough, providing greater effectiveness and safety. The way we prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases will be transformed and optimized.

Read more interesting articles on some of the global trends that we monitor. 

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Global Trends 2019 – Smart homes

The “smart home” market has exploded in the last few years, creating an ecosystem of interconnected devices in our homes and lives.  Here are five trends we think are worth following:

More natural voice control

Voice control platforms like Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby and others allow you to control and operate any connected devices in your home with just a string of verbal commands. In 2019, we expect a more natural way of speaking with our smart devices instead of a standard list of commands.

More efficient network control

Networking systems designed specifically for smart homes have become more common – with ample bandwidth, speed and range to handle all the new technologies and devices. Next step will be software and apps to allow homeowners to prioritize which products get the best connection or set parameters for family members (e.g. no gaming during homework).

Rising need for cybersafety in Internet of Things (IoT)

As IoT has enabled greater communication between the devices inside our homes and the world outside, the ugly flipside of vulnerability to hacking has come to the fore.  Manufacturers will start paying more attention to extra layers of cybersafety to give real peace of mind.

Customized functions based on users’ identity

Smart home devices are now able to learn from users’ habits and adjust settings accordingly. Biometrics and artificial intelligence are becoming more commonplace, and customization based on the identity of users will become more mainstream.

Drones for home security

Drones have quickly evolved into a security device with integrated surveillance cameras and the ability to give users a bird’s eye view of places that a standard surveillance camera couldn’t go. Drones are now due a makeover to look less like a toy and more like a piece of home décor.

If you’d like to find out more about our experience in technology trends, contact Rob.

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Global Trends 2019 – The rise of healthy eating

Eating trends come and go at speed, but one trend which has remained constant in recent years is the healthy eating trend inside and outside the home.

This is not only limited to the rise of the ‘free-from’ trend (gluten free, lactose free, alcohol free) or the reduced salt, reduced sugar, and reduced fat alternatives that abound.  There’s also a fundamental shift in the kind of dishes and the openness consumers have to new styles of eating. And Asian fusion dishes are playing a big role.

It’s no surprise that Poke, which started appearing in top food trends around the world in 2015, is topping charts today.  Interest has peaked every summer since 2015 and as of January 2018 global interest was more than 17 times higher than in 2016.

In many ways Poke has all the ingredients to make it a top healthy eating trend.  With a lot of similar flavour profiles to sushi, Poke is an easy to understand and easy to reproduce dish at home.

There’s a familiarity with dishes such as sashimi, ceviche and tartare and in its latest iteration as the Poke Bowl, there are many similarities to chirashidon, Buddha bowl, chipotle burrito bowl and Korean bimbimbap.  People feel confident in recognizing something familiar, yet still keep a sense of newness and discovery.

Key to Poke’s success as a healthy eating trend is its freshness, the quick preparation approach and the creativity people bring to making their own versions and combining their own favourite elements.  No strict recipe to follow and plenty of freedom make Poke fun and flexible.

If you’d like to find out more about our experience in food trends, contact Rob.

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