“Despite the rapid growth, some people may still be cautious about using fingerprint readers on their phone, due to the perceived susceptibility to spoofing,” says Georges Kioes, TMT Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg. “The reality is that modern biometric sensors have an incredible ability to spot fake fingerprints. Furthermore, trying to copy the fingerprints of the device’s owner would require putting their fingers into a mold, which would likely not go undetected by the victim.”

With the rapid pace of access and adoption of this technology, the challenge is to determine which additional applications could use fingerprint readers and other biometric inputs to provide rapid and secure authentication.

Brains at the edge: machine learning goes mobile – Biometrics is part of a broader scope of technology entering our devices—Deloitte predicts that over 300 million smartphones, or more than one fifth of units sold in 2017, will have machine learning capabilities in the next 12 months. The report showcases how mobile devices will be able to perform machine learning tasks even without an internet connection, which will significantly alter how humans interact with technology across every industry, market, and society.

The great indoors: the final frontier for digital navigation - As of 2022, at least one quarter of all human and machine uses of precision digital navigation are expected to include an indoor portion or be for an entirely indoor journey, compared to less than five percent of all uses in 2017. This technology allows users to locate a store within a shopping mall and thereafter a department within it, an office inside a building, or the right carriage in a train.

“Private and government organizations alike should start becoming aware of the uses of this new technology within their markets and prepare themselves for potential benefits,” continues Georges Kioes.

5G: A revolution in evolution, even in 2017 - Significant, tangible steps toward the deployment of 5G, the fifth generation of cellular networks, are expected to take place this year in Luxembourg and beyond. Planned upgrades to 4G networks, as well as the performance of the first limited 5G deployments, should acquaint users and operators with several of the most important features of 5G networks, including significantly higher speeds, lower latency, and support for low-power low-bitrate IoT devices and sensors.

Paul Lee, the Head of Global TMT Research at Deloitte, will visit Luxembourg on 31 January to elaborate on these predictions and more at the Deloitte Digital Series Conference.

About the TMT Predictions
Now in its 16^th year, Deloitte Global’s annual TMT Predictions provides an outlook on key trends over the course of the next 1-5 years in the technology, media and telecommunications industry sectors worldwide. Full details about the global TMT Predictions are available here: https://www2.deloitte.com/lu/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/tmt-predictions-2017.html