During the year 2022, one of the sectors most affected by the economic slowdown has been the technology sector, witnessing layoffs of a large part of the staff of the largest companies in this sector. But as we well know, technology is here to stay in our daily life. Recently, Goldman Sachs analysts have designed a list of ten tech trends to follow, of which there are five what we are going to break down for you and what companies could benefit.
1. Online commerce will continue to boom
During the time of confinements caused by the pandemic, the online commerce lived a eye due to restricciones imposed to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Now, almost three years later and with the current debacle in the technology sector, the debate on continuity of this trend or the return to pre-pandemic levels sigue standing. Goldman predicts that this trend keep going taking online commerce as an example. They are based on the observation of the retail sales, which grew from a 20% to a 27% in online commerce at the end of 2020. This trend is expected to Keep growing during the next few years to previous rhythm to pandemic, benefiting companies present in online commerce.
Growth in the penetration ratio of online commerce in the United States per year. Source Goldman Sachs.
2. Cloud storage
Another tech trend to follow over the course of this year is cloud storage. AWS de Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Azure de Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) have provided a great growth for their respective companies, which could guide the stock price of these two companies. Although Goldman believes that austerity in IT spending will cause a strong fall for the following year. By their best estimate, cloud spending growth will will slow down until it is between the 4% and the 22% in 2023.
Amazon Unearned Revenue and Commitments. Source: Goldman Sachs.
But the important thing is that even the most generous estimate is still much slower that the growth of more than 30% that these companies have been achieving (more than 40% in the case of Azure). But Goldman is still long-term optimist. Most of the giants in this niche have achieved close contracts increasingly noticeable, which means that will generate a lot of income in the future when they get going.
3. Social networks as an advertising medium
Currently, many large companies have invested great efforts in offering advertising services on their platforms. But at a time when the economic growth expectations are low, the efforts are being in vain. At the moment, Amazon is one of those that has best positioned itself in the advertising framework through social networks, where progressively continues to increase your income in this segment annually. Other companies that follow in its wake are Meta (NASDAQ:META), A, the parent company of Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Pinterest (NYSE:PINS), Uber (NYSE:UBER) and Doordash (NYSE:DASH).
Amazon advertising segment revenue. Source: Goldman Sachs.
4. Web 3.0 is here to stay
This is one of the tech trends that are In the spotlight of all the analysts; the innovative concept of Web 3.0. It is not known when artificial intelligence, augmented or virtual reality will be part of our daily lives, but we have already seen that they are taking shape. Big steps. We have clear examples with the metaverses, which enjoyed their particular boom when Facebook decided to change his name to Meta in reference to this concept. Without going any further, the recent boom that emerged with the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT is another clear example. Goldman expects the video game sector to position itself in front of the virtual and augmented reality sector, with Activision (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) and Take-Two (NASDAQ:TTWO) leading this trend.
Growth of augmented and virtual reality users in the United States. Source: Goldman Sachs.
5. Tik Tok has revolutionized social networks
The arrival of TikTok introduced a new concept within social networks; the short videos. And seeing how this newcomer was eating up their market share by leaps and bounds, the other social media platforms They were forced to renew themselves or die. The problem is that generating money with this type of content is quite difficult due to the mere fact that getting hooked on a miniclip is more difficult than viewing content like those on Instagram. Within this trend the one that has come out worst has been Youtube, despite receiving nearly 30.000 billion views through its short video segment (Youtube Shorts). Therefore, converting views into revenue will be crucial this year.
Perspective of the market share of investment in influencers of the main social networks. Source: Goldman Sachs.
In turn, Goldman predicts that combined spending on influencer marketing will double between 2019 and 2024, placing it above 7.000 million. A modest figure for these companies to try to increase their user share.