
Ask HN: In the next 5 years which markets will grow the most and why? - zongitsrinzler
The more specific you are the better.
======
Mz
Most people are terrible at predicting the future in this way. Some of the
most accurate predictions sound like (or are) jokes at the time, like when JK
Rowling was writing her first book as basically a "welfare mom." She did a lot
of the writing while her baby napped at some eatery owned by
friends/relatives. She would make jokes to the effect of "When my book gets
famous, it will put your place on the map!" That basically all came true, from
the book being famous to it making the place she wrote it famous too.

But when you go back historically, predictions of what life would be like
"now" all left out the world changing invention of computers and internet.

There is a scene in the movie "The Graduate" where he is at a party and
everyone is telling him what he should go into as his career because it will
be big in the future. One person tells him "Plastics!" This was a joke at the
time, a ridiculous statement. Years later, the plastics industry used that bit
in a TV commercial.

If you really, sincerely believe "The Future is all about X industry," you
aren't telling people that on the internet. You are quietly behind the scenes
buying more shares in X or getting training to work in X or otherwise trying
to make sure you are the firstest with the mostest in X.

~~~
BatFastard
5 years out is not that hard, since it is basically which technologies that
are either just out, or coming out soon will be successful. 10 years is more
challenging, 20 impossible.

~~~
Mz
Five years ago, tablets were basically cutting edge new tech. They were
insanely expensive and crappy as hell. They often faced limitations in
functionality because a lot of websites did not accommodate them. I know
because I bought two of them 5.5 years ago and it was $2000 worth of computers
and lots of stuff just did NOT work.

Today, you can get a tablet for under $50 and Google is (or has) split its
search stuff into PC and mobile search and is actively optimizing stuff for
mobile because mobile search is eating the world. I seriously doubt anyone
expected mobile to take over like this when it was new tech.

In contrast, "net books" seem to have gone extinct. I think that was supposed
to be The Next Big thing -- until tablets came out and began eating their
lunch.

~~~
andars
5 years ago, over 100 million tablets had been sold worldwide and the iPad was
entering its 4th generation. Your description is more apt for 10 years ago.

~~~
Mz
Well, according to Wikipedia, the history of tablets goes back to the 1800s.
But I know for a fact that I bought two tablets on December 31st, 2011 that
were priced at $2000 (after getting a 2 year internet service contract plus a
20% employee discount to reduce the price, I paid $800 up front) and it was
kind of the hot new item at the time. And I know for a fact that proliferation
of apps we have now was not the norm back then. I had enormous difficulty
getting things done on it and I noticed that painfully because I essentially
had no other access to computers at the time. I can now do all kinds of things
on a tablet bought for under $50 that I could only dream of and wish for 5
years ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tablet_computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tablet_computers)

Humorously:

 _" Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014" was the huge headline
summarising the bold prediction from 2008 by Mary Meeker..._

[http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-
marketi...](http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-
analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/)

~~~
giobox
The first generation iPad launched close to two years before your example in
2010 at $499.

I agree with the previous remarks - the tablet industry was pretty well
established 5 years ago and hardly cutting edge tech - 10 years ago is
definitely a better comparison at this point, with the crappy tablet devices
Microsoft were pushing at much higher price points then.

------
chauhankiran
I personally think the market of add-on or web browser's extension.

Why? Because, web browser is second most software used after operating system
by a normal computer users. If you are developer you use editor and web
browser, if you are writer you use world processor and web browser, if you are
market person you use trading software and web browser and so on. I mean web
browser is something used by everyone.

We have written applications ( for computer and mobile device ) for most
useful sotware - operating system to reach out our users. Now, it is time to
target next software used by everyone. You might create a website but it will
only be there until user do not close that tab. But, with extension, you will
be in constant connection with user.

Currently thid market is uder estimate as many developer consider that it is
not something that consider as programming. But, I think every website
specific limit to connect users. and at that situation, add-ons will come to
rescue.

~~~
joshbaptiste
I see the browser becoming the OS period. I didn't realize this until I got a
ChromeBook and realized (with crouton) I can do everything I normally do on my
Linux notebook.

~~~
kakarot
Do you normally just watch Youtube and use Google Docs on Linux? Because
that's about where the set of things you can do on both ends

~~~
joshbaptiste
All I need is a browser and a terminal since my development environment
consists only of tmux/vim via Crouton chroots and Plex Web/Youtube/Google
Music for entertainment.

~~~
kakarot
Why use Chrome OS at all if you're just gonna virtualize Linux?

------
pdog
Blockchain and cryptocoin markets will probably grow the most in the next five
years.

The total market cap for cryptocoins will grow from $50 billion today to $1+
trillion in the future.

~~~
chronic940
Do you know how few people on HN even own any cryptocurrency? It's likely
close to 1-2%. It's been like that for the past 5 years.

~~~
ryanx435
Major movie theaters and other retail stores in Phoenix, Arizona, accept
bitcoin. It may not be 100% mainstream yet, but crypticurrency is going to
explode in a big way

~~~
gst
As a customer, why would I want to use Bitcoin (instead of, e.g., a credit
card) at a movie theater (or at any other type of shop)?

~~~
mythrwy
For the of the thrill of not knowing how much actual spending power you have
from one day to the next?

~~~
Top19
I can't say whether you're right or not, but your comment caused me to laugh
out loudly enough that people at Starbucks looked over at me. Thank you.

------
sonink
India. Because it will go from 100mn internet users to 1200 mn, enabled by a
massive 4G/fiber deployment currently underway.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Their economy has also been growing at about 7% per year. That's 40% over 5
years, which is around a trillion dollars (more in PPP).

------
BatFastard
AI in all its guises, such as self driving cars, virtual assistants like
Alexa, Siri, etc.

Augmented Reality, I would suspect in a year or two we will have the first
successful product.

Services and entertainment for aging populations.

Real estate auction services, Trump is going to have to sell of a lot after
going to prison.

~~~
BatFastard
Forgot solar power, batteries, roofs.

------
stock_toaster
Healthcare. Because a large portion of the population in the west (baby boomer
generation) is getting older.

~~~
chillydawg
Look at healthcare cost going up - this is already happening in all markets.
People getting old and fat cost an absolute fortune to keep alive.

------
crypticlizard
Timescales are hard but...Ai will do mostly all of it and humans are being
factored out. Humans will need not apply for real work, fake work could
proliferate. Automation vertically integrated into robotic systems will
prevail in mostly all sectors... Embodied AGI will autonomously operate under
duress, capable of or superior to humans at warfare. This is already normal
today to a lesser extent, but not publicly claimed by anyone. I believe this
is so because a soldier never reveals his position. Superior Industries could
be: computer hacking using AI, computers being used in new ways on a mass
scale, super computer quantum computing, nanotechnology, organ replacement,
DNA therapies, automated field doctors, 3d PTSD therapy machines, data
thievery & recovery using AI. AI will cause crime sprees as new exploits using
AI trump non-AI systems. Also, People plugging their brains into computers
makes sense bc then we achieve intelligence upgrades.3d printers that print
anything fast. Lifelong AI Buddies/monitors. Nostalgia Industries as old
people feel really out of touch with the modern world. Propaganda and fake
news bc they will be more effectively convincing bc AI. As AI really starts to
prove itself superior People will question everything. Maybe we will want to
colonize Mars bc it will make humans feel not obsolete. Who knows.

------
tyingq
Low cost cloud providers. No idea why there's not a low cost competitor to
AWS, GCE, and Azure. And I don't mean just a VPS. Full service cloud with
equivalents for EC2, ELB, S3, Lambda, etc.

~~~
skynode
Outcompete Amazon (especially) on prices? Waiting to see who'll achieve that
feat.

That aside, there's a cost threshold beyond which it wouldn't makes sense to
offer cloud services​ at such ridiculous prices. If anything, I actually think
compute prices might increase in future as demand for cloud services become
globally outrageous, from Alaska to Zagreb.

~~~
marktangotango
I'd like to see the opposite of admining your own custom stack on vps or cloud
instances. What I want is a really full featured walled guarden where compute
storage and bandwidth are all metered and you just pay for what you use. Super
cheap if you can live within the constraints. I'm talking mainframe style web
app hosting, one giant server, you pay for a slice. No admining or
provisioning of instances required.

------
zackmorris
Wrote a whole long response beginning with "my gut feeling is that markets are
driven as much by politics as technology so Hacker News may not be the place
to ask." Then said, man, that sucks.

I'm hoping for a market to end all markets, where the product is money. You
sign up with a company, it pays you. All anyone wants is cheap, cheaper, free.
Getting paid tops that.

So maybe solar panels are just getting competitive, but getting paid to put
them on your roof, that's hot.

Turo is hot.

Universal basic income is hot. Maybe politicians don't have the imagination to
make it happen, but we do. Secretly every employee in the world yearns to load
the part of their job that even a monkey could do into a spreadsheet, go home,
and still get paid. Given the permission to automate our own jobs, we’ll do it
gladly and in large numbers. The only thing stopping us is really really,
ridiculously rich people, and people with no imagination. Somehow we have to
find a way to pay them as well, and keep paying them, no matter how much they
don’t want to get paid.

------
dominotw
a reaction to technology overreach in ours lives. People are sick of their
phones, laptops, sleep tracking, social media. We want to reclaim our mind
back. There is place in LA that does Buddhist retreat where you sit in silence
for 1 week, its booked 8 months in advance.

------
beagle3
Person tracking.

We're going through something similar to the industrial revolution, lots of
people will lose their job to AI (or still be employed, but with significantly
lower wages - even previously untouchable professions like lawyers, doctors
and programmers).

To avoid riots, these people will be fed either through existing welfare
programs or new basic-income style ones. But the old guard will want to make
sure they don't blow their money on hookers and blow and booze, so anyone who
peddles "here's how we can figure out which of the welfare recipients is non-
compliant with their spending habits" is going to make a killing.

Sad, but inevitable in the current political climate.

~~~
orthoganol
Maybe in the next 50 years, but not the next 5. There's about a 10-1 marketing
to actual breakthrough ratio for AI changing our economy. I agree it will
eventually, and has made some inroads, but it won't anytime soon to the extent
where we have to solve problems of demographic shifts.

There are few people I'm aware of who think to the contrary who are actually
working at a technical level in the field of AI, and not founders of a startup
riding buzzword funding or who have financial or PR interests to hype AI.

I'll add a caveat that the invention of general AI would accelerate this
timeline. I think it will require paradigm shifts, not feature-augmented/
exotic ensembles of neural networks with RL layers, or other approaches
possible with current techniques, but think it is still more possible, sooner
than AI skeptics believe, but still beyond 5 years.

~~~
beagle3
I think the nature of these revolutions is that they happen slowly but
invisibly until one day all of a sudden everyone is aware of them. I wrote
"AI", but it's not _just_ AI, it's a lot of things that are coming of age.

Some "Minimum wage jobs" are disappearing -- a local fast food joint now has
about 1/3 of the employees it had a couple of years ago: they have better
automated machines in the kitchen, and a smart ordering kiosk that most people
use (though there's still a person at the register, for people who are
uncomfortable with the kiosk or requests that are not available through it).

Translators, as a job, have almost disappeared (relegated to those needing "an
official translation"). That happened in the last 10 years, starting with an
awfully funny and weird altavista or google translate that would give you
results that could only be meaningful if you had some familiarity with both
languages - down to modern translation which, while not perfect, is readable
and understandable.

Professional photohgraphers for newspapers used to command a $3,000/day salary
just 10 years ago. Now it's closer to $300/day, if they can get it at all -
because there's already someone on the scene, with a smart phone camera -- the
pictures are horrible, but people are willing to give them for credit, so a
photographer is unneeded.

The army of people working for Google/Facebook/Amazon to moderate user
content, is being decimated.

It's started to happen to lawyers; It's not prevalent yet, but it is eating
the more "mechanical" parts of a lawyer's job - finding relevant historical
cases and summarizing them. Computers are now slightly better than the interns
that used to be assigned to these jobs. In 5 years, they might be better than
the experienced partners at these kinds of jobs.

It's closer than most people think in many, many jobs. Truck drivers will
likely not be completely replaced in 5 years, but their jobs might change to
"24 hour shifts" in which they are allowed to sleep until the automated truck
wakes them up to deal with some condition.

You know, writing down what's in a picture, was almost sci-fi 10 years ago,
and right now you have Google, Microsoft and ClariFi offering this as a cheap
API.

------
espitia
The medical cannabis industry! \- Science: as we pass the obstacles of
regulation, more studies will be able to confirm (hopefully) what we suspect
so far. \- Zeitgeist of our times is "going green". \- Damaged image of big
pharma.

------
clio
The atheist generation will have grown up and begin to look for someone to
tell them everything will be okay. It's a good opportunity to start a new
religion.

Also, some form of artificial companionship.

~~~
limeblack
A new religion based around what? Is this religion supposed to actually be
believed? This is one of my favorite videos which explains why new religions
don't have as much credibility
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEg_Oys4NkA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEg_Oys4NkA)
You have to watch the video to probably get the basic idea. I'm not Jewish
despite the video focusing on Judaism.

~~~
clio
Which direction is the zeitgeist blowing? From my perspective, it seems that
there is a real and ongoing erosion of local communities (labor, religious, or
otherwise) that are replaced, often times, by a shallow virtual existence. It
does not have to be a religion in the conventional sense, just something that
attempts to give meaning to the meaningless.

------
iamacynic
my three guesses (my company is in 1 of these areas):

consumer internet privacy and security (think barracuda for the home market --
above and beyond a standard router/firewall possibly with active L7 features)

consumer and enterprise storage management (they literally can't even make
enough ssd's right now, people and companies are hoarding data and can't
manage it effectively or reliably)

rural and wilderness area wireless internet (people will start moving out of
cities again and will want the same > 50 megabit low latency service).

~~~
dnautics
Fascinating... I had a similar list, and The company I work for is on it. Drop
a line.

------
westoque
Cryptocurrency.

Have you sent someone money internationally before? How about across different
banks? Typical transfers process at around 3-5 days. With the help of
cryptocurrencies like Ripple, Steller and the like. Transfers happen in
seconds. This will grow because now, banks will utilize this technology to get
rid of the old one (Swift anyone?) and will save banks lots of time and money.

~~~
alasdair_
I send through transferwise. It's very fast and the exchange rates are very
close to the forex rates - it was a lot easier and cheaper than using bitcoin.

The trick is to match flows of cash so they money isnt actually transferred
internationally - my cash from the uk was sent to someone else in the uk and
my US bank account was credited from some other US-based bank.

~~~
tompazourek
It's quite smart what Transferwise are doing.

When a transfer is made from country A to country B, the money gets first
transferred from the sender in country A to local Transferwise account in
country A (avoiding fees and conversions). Then they send the money from local
Transferwise account in country B to the recipient in country B (again
avoiding fees and conversions).

The magic is how they ensure that the local Transferwise accounts in each
country have enough money to do the transfers. They own a bank account in
every country they operate in, and the money flows between those bank
accounts. They need to move money between their local accounts in each country
while minimizing the amounts transferred, but also minimizing the fees and
conversions. When they actually move the money is up to them, they just need
to ensure they have enough on each account. I guess there's a lot of variables
to optimize for, and it would be interesting to know more details of the
process.

I've also seen a company called Azimo trying to do a similar thing, but I
haven't tried them yet.

------
avaer
Some mode of online social interaction that seems ridiculous now but will seem
obvious in retrospect. This will be milked for ads and acquired by a big
player while me-toos nibble the ends in the aftermath.

The market will grow from zero to millions in this time, but it will be
entirely consumed by one of the big five and everyone will just think of it as
a Google feature or something.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
You've just described 2nd and 3rd generation AR

------
tmaly
I think food technology. As the worlds population grows, the demand for food
and more productive ways to produce it will grow.

I think semi-automated systems will become more automated using some of the AI
that is in the news today.

We may even see better automation on the programming front in terms of being
able to create stuff.

I think we will see more software and automation in government at all levels.
There is drive to automate everything, but governments tend to be even slower
than enterprise to adopt things given the budgetary process.

Lastly, I think we will see some significant gains in genetic programming that
come out of the CRISPR technique. If you recall the tech that allowed us to
sequence the human genome was very slow at first. Eventually they developed
faster techniques, and not you can sequence things an order of magnitude
faster.

------
id122015
There will be war. Anything that will protect us will do.

~~~
xapata
Will be? There _is_.

------
ParameterOne
Indexing. Who needs Google when you have your own index? And I don't know
about you but I can't get passed 16 pages of search results on google even
though it has billions of results for the search term "contact us" (have it
set to 50 per page)

------
borplk
I will go ahead and make this prediction for the amusement of myself
(hopefully) and others in 5 years. Here it comes:

"AI will not become as big as people want to believe today."

------
AznHisoka
carpal tunnel syndrome specialists.

------
Existenceblinks
1) Weapon. Because of War. 2) Entertainment. Because of Pain.

------
nugget
Support for trade schools and skilled vocational pathways (and vocational
entrepreneurship) in place of four year university education for all.

------
jayaram
I think in the next 5 years desktop applications are going to be a thing
again. Frameworks like Qt, electron, nw.js and others have made it very easy
for developers to create desktop applications.

~~~
nextweek2
I struggle with that suggestion. Which probably means you are correct.

However we are seeing technologies like WebAssembly and WebGL which are
directly addressing the benefits of desktop applications. What would a desktop
application offer over browser based app?

------
richardw
VR. People living in a place/time/body they physically aren't. When I'm old
I'd like to VR to all the places I missed out on visiting because I was
working too hard. I won't be alone.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
People have been banging on about VR for years, I don't see it ever becoming
more than a niche thing.

~~~
Gustomaximus
And people were banging on about personal mobile devices for years, then it
all came together with the first iPhone. There are loads of these examples if
you think about it. People expect these fast product deliveries form concepts
but it takes time for hardware/software and execution to catch-up with
potential.

------
WalterBright
Health care. The boomers are entering their prime health care spending years,
and Obamacare will engender huge industry profits from "spend all you want -
someone else will pay the bill!".

------
tonyedgecombe
Anything to do with mitigating climate change, clearly we aren't going to do
anything significant to stop it.

------
olalonde
Not a market per se, but there seems to be a lot of low hanging fruits related
to machine learning.

------
atroll
im betting my pennies on real estate

------
alex_g
food automation, healthcare, learning/edu tech

------
NoCanDo
AI, because everything and their grandma needs to be smart.

~~~
fellellor
That would be IoT.

