Blog: midia predictions

November is one of my favourite times of year, as an analyst anyways. Why? Because it is when the MIDiA team pool their collective brainpower to formulate our end-of-year predictions. What gives our predictions their unique angle is that they are constructed within an inter-connected framework, factoring in the cross-industry trends that will shape the coming years.

With 2021 nearly behind us, and 2022 fast approaching, it is that of year for the MIDiA predictions report. We have been publishing our predictions reports since 2016, and apart from being good fun to do, we have also established a pretty good track record of success.

Following the pandemic breakout in March 2020, MIDiA predicted that Covid-19-induced games engagement growth was temporary and will face a correction as the world starts coming back to life. Indeed, with four quarters of data in hindsight, the Covid Bounce effect for games is in full swing.

In MIDiA’s 2020 Predictions report published in December 2019 we predicted that tech majors would start creating subscription bundles, with Apple leading the fray. Lo and behold, news has just come out that Apple is working on ‘ Apple One’ – a multi-genre subscription bundle that will includeApple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and Apple News+.

CES, the big annual consumer tech show, is underway in Las Vegas. Unlike in most previous years, there has been little in the way of big new announcements. This is in large part because we are reaching a degree of maturity in the consumer landscape, with big new developments being replaced by smaller, sustaining innovations.

MIDiA has just published its annual predictions report . Here are a few highlights. 2018 was another year of change, disruption and transformation across media and technology. Although hyped technologies – VR, blockchain, AI music – failed to meet inflated expectations, concepts such as privacy, voice, emerging markets and peak in the attention economy shaped the evolution of digital content businesses, in a year that was one to remember for subscriptions across all content types.

With 2017 drawing to a close and 2018 on the horizon, it is time for MIDiA’s 2018 predictions. But first, on how we did last year,our 2017 predictions had a 94% success rate. See bottom of this post for a run down.