You all likely understand the hype cycle of technology, even if it has never officially been explained to you, because we've all followed the cycle numerous times with various products and features. The basic idea (as you can see on the chart below) is that every technology tends to go through a cycle of hyper-inflated expectations and disappointment, before finding its groove in the market. Today, Gartner released its 2014 Hype Cycle Map for emerging technologies, and we wanted to take a look at where different mobile features land on that chart.
An interesting piece of the chart is that virtual personal assistants are at the beginning of the hype cycle, but various technologies that make those personal assistants work are found farther along. For example, natural-language question answering is at the Peak of Inflated Expectations right now, while speech recognition has made it all the way to the Plateau of Productivity.
Unsurprisingly, NFC is found almost as deep into the Trough of Disillusionment as you can get. NFC has plenty of viable uses, but the push to make it the mobile payment standard has failed, and companies have yet to try other options beyond sending files between devices. Similarly, mobile health monitoring is deep in the Trough. This may seem a bit surprising given how popular fitness trackers and health-focused wearables are right now, but it should be noted that the many fitness wearables end up abandoned pretty quickly.
Overall, we can't argue too much with the placement of various items on the list. Gartner has done a solid job. What do you guys think?
Michael Heller is known for his clear and informative articles on mobile technology. He explores important topics such as the rollouts of 5G networks and the advancements in mobile payments, offering readers insights into the evolving tech landscape.
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