Forecast 2019

FORECAST 2019
A GLIMPSE
INTO THE
FUTURE

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTUREFORECAST 2019
2 3
from the headquarters of

CONTENTS
FOREWORD 8
MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDERS 11
INTRODUCTION 13
2018 BALANCE 15
DISRUPTING & RESHAPING 2019 21
1 SOFTWARE EATS NETWORKING 22
2 SOFTWARE (ALSO) EATS LOW PRODUCTIVITY 24
3 DATA AS CURRENCY 26
4 DIGITAL IDOLS 29
5 LARGE-SCALE SENSING TURNS INTO PREDICTION 31
6 SHARED AUTONOMY 34
7 UNBUNDLED MOBILITY (AND AGGREGATION) 37
ABOUT UBIWHERE 41
WHAT’S NEXT 43
Copyright © 2019 Ubiwhere

8 9
FOREWORD
Ana Tavares Lattibeaudiere - Head of North America at GSMA
I met the Ubiwhere team in 2018 while I was vis-
iting my family in Portugal. I walked away from our
meeting feeling both inspired and proud. Inspired
by the infinite possibilities we discussed and
proud of the talent emerging from Portugal.
We are very fortunate to be a part of an industry
that personifies innovation. Innovation inspires
– a theme you will find throughout this Forecast
Report. With the anticipated arrival of 5G, there is
no denying we are on the brink of a major trans-
formation on the lives of millions of people in the
world. We are entering the age of “Intelligent
Connectivity,” the combination of 5G, Artificial
Intelligence and the Internet of Things.
I am most excited to see the powerful impact IoT
will have on cities. By 2025, 25 billion IoT devices
will be deployed globally (GSMA Intelligence,
2018), bringing ubiquitous connectivity and ena-
bling impactful innovations in how cities operate.
With increasing global adoption, the benefits Smart
City technologies are having on the environment,
traffic, public safety, citizens and businesses are
evident. Smart Cities are driving generational
changes in how cities are efficiently managed while
simultaneously creating platforms for new services
and positively affecting our climate and our people.
But the future promises even more. At the fore-
front of Smart City Innovation in 2019, 5G net-
works will enable network advancements in
scale, reliability, speed and intelligence designed
specifically for IoT devices and networks. These
advancements, when combined with innovations
such as Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), Edge
Computing and Machine Learning/ AI, lay the
foundation for the age of “Intelligent Connectivity”
and position the Mobile Industry as an accelerator
and key driver of the future of Smart Cities.
We don’t have a clear roadmap of what we will ac-
complish; we cannot even begin to imagine what

10 11
will be created next, and after that, and so on. I
can’t think of anything more inspiring than that. I,
and the world, look forward to what is to come.
Ana Tavares Lattibeaudiere
Ana Tavares Lattibeaudiere is the Head of North America for
the GSMA. The GSMA represents the interests of 750 mobile
operators worldwide, uniting them with over 350 companies in
the broader mobile ecosystem., including handset and device
makers, software companies, equipment providers and inter-
net companies, as well as organizations in adjacent industry
sectors. The GSMA also produces the industry-leading MWC
events held annually in Barcelona, Los Angeles and Shanghai,
as well as the Mobile 360 Series of regional conferences.
MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDERS
2018 was a sweeping year. We presented a new
image and refreshed website to the World with
the same love and dedication that defines us. We
opened our home’s doors to new businesses, new
employees and new challenges. We executed
hundreds of projects and created dozens of new
partnerships. Our focus, as always, was on the
people who are by our side every single day. And
this is the reason why we have the strength to con-
tinue growing and thriving at all levels. More than
simply developing innovative solutions, we want to
be involved in the entire technological ecosystem
allowing us to remain one step ahead. Our desire
is to keep creating solutions which will have a
meaningful impact people’s quality of life for gen-
erations to come. We want to make a difference
every day. And we can only achieve this if we con-
tinue to focus on key areas such as Smart Cities,
Telecommunications and New Technologies.

12 13
More than a trend report for the upcoming year, we
want this Forecast to be a set of macro perspec-
tives of what transpired last year in the market and
what we are expecting for this year. This document
also showcases our team’s commitment. They are
a group of more than 40 individuals which come in
every day with a burning desire of doing more and
better. This document belongs to them. We cannot
predict what 2019 holds in store for us, but we
believe it will be a year full of wonderful challeng-
es and surprises.
We wish you to keep up with us.
All the best for 2019,
Ubiwhere’s Founders (Rui A. Costa & Nuno Ribeiro)
INTRODUCTION
The constant evolution and demand of the mar-
ket lead us to the emerging need to redefine our
strategic focus. Over the past few years, due to the
digitization process, there has been a need to shift
paradigms. The future is to implement a culture of
digital transformation which is broader, affecting
processes, and is increasingly oriented towards
people. IT requires us to think more and more
about IoT, Machine Learning and User Experience.
To think ahead.
This document is intended to be a clear vision of
our guidelines for 2019. More than strategy, this
document is aligned with what we believe to be the
main focuses of 2019 in the technological area.
With it, we will be able to anticipate problems,
redefine ideas, predict events and identify oppor-
tunities. It is to be expected there may be a need
for course correction over time as trends change

14 15
and evolve, however our focus will always remain
people. It is for them that we work every day.
In the first part of this Forecast we take stock of
major events in 2018. From the battle of Fintech
to Apple’s relationship with consumers. After this
initial reflection, we present our vision for 2019.
The main technological trends which will certainly
inspire other companies and help them redefine
their own future. We do not want to influence, we
want merely to inspire.
2018 BALANCE
As 2018 draws to an end, we reflect upon some of
its most prominent technological outcomes, in or-
der to look ahead into 2019 and beyond, peeking
into what the future will bring.
While 2017 was the year we thought poised to see
a second internet age emerge out of blockchain
technology, 2018 brought about instead the sec-
ond trough of disillusionment for crypto & block-
chain, with prices dropping, Initial Coin Offerings
heavily scrutinized as financial instruments and the
collapse of many projects that were nothing but
hype in 2017. Despite the negativity, many new
companies continue to bet heavily on this space
and build on blockchain technology in an attempt
to solve some of its fundamental weaknesses. We
believe these bets will pay off in the next 5 years,
and the truly useful, scalable and market-driv-
en teams will find their footing and bring about

16 17
much-needed change to places where the tradi-
tional internet model has become too inefficient or
unhealthily monopolized.
It was also the year where the battle for Fintech
went one step further. Digital financial services
like Revolut, N26 or Monzo applied for full-fledged
banking licenses, digital investment instruments
received some much-needed upgrades and some
of the largest banks fought back by upgrading their
offers. Venmo, Square, Robinhood, Stripe, Carta
and many others continue to remove friction when
dealing with regulatory and financial barriers, en-
abling new ventures to emerge and consumers to
fully benefit from financial markets. We’ll see this
continue to progress throughout the next 5 years,
as some of these new and upcoming companies
become essential to our daily lives, while the more
progressive banks and financial institutions begin
to blur the lines with improved service offerings.
Ultimately, citizens will benefit the most.
On the software infrastructure side, we contin-
ue to see new developments taking the pain out
of managing large-scale operations. Serverless
is on the rise, with tech pundits predicting it will
continuously enable very small companies (head-
count-wise) to capture more and more of the mar-
kets they operate in. Will we see the first one-per-
son company rise to more than $1B valuation
within the next 5 years? Very likely so. This move
to the cloud has also proven to be the perfect
environment for the second coming of Microsoft,
who has once again emerged as the most valua-
ble company in the world by growing services like
Azure and its cloud enterprise offering.
GDPR and regulation were also hot topics this
year. The public’s eyeballs were on tech giants’ re-
sponse to these regulatory challenges and we saw
Facebook, Google and others respond swiftly and
publicly to regulatory oversight. The general feel-
ing is that these challenges will continue to grow
as digital service regulation becomes increasingly
complicated. It will be interesting to see where
and how it affects new entrants to consumer mar-
kets and whether it promotes innovation by allow-
ing companies built with privacy concerns from
the ground up to emerge as victors, or stifles it.

18 19
Speaking of data, Apple took another step in im-
proving the benefits data monitored by its devices
provide to users. The new Apple watch debuted a
feature which monitors your heart rate and advis-
es you when to seek medical care. The quantified
self trend has been steadily growing. As leaders
in the space start taking it more seriously with
cutting edge tech, we’ll see the benefits pan out
and people’s relationships with their bodies shift.
With new tech comes questionable practice, and
CRISPR, a new, promising gene-editing technolo-
gy, apparently went live in China without a care in
the world for best practice and science’s checks
and balances. Technology moves us forward, how
we respond to it dictates how it will affect us.
Finally, sustainable mobility has shown tremen-
dous progress. Electric scooters’ extraordinary
rise and Tesla’s Model 3 production reaching
scale, have proven that it is in fact possible, and
we’ll continue to see electric mobility reaching the
hands of citizens worldwide as we change how we
move and how we power our transportation. Lyft
and Uber have also announced their IPOs, and the
market for mobility will continue to change what
companies’ roles are in how we move and how we
think about vehicle ownership and access. Volvo’s
Care program, with a monthly all-inclusive sub-
scription, is just the beginning.
We’ve also continued to experiment with smart
cities, and we’ll have lots of lessons learned from
Sidewalk Labs’ cooperation with Toronto and their
pre-agreements with others, as entire sections of
cities are built from the ground up with technology
in mind and spaces are designed to be smart. Time
will tell whether this is how we build new urban
spaces. In the meantime, the best way to predict
the future is to invent it, and, at Ubiwhere, we’ll
continue to do so.

20 21
DISRUPTING & RESHAPING 2019
The move into a new year forces us to set new
goals, to review the strategy and to chart a path
for the coming years, in the short and long term.
This analysis has to go hand in hand with the
external environment, from the direction to the
future of technology to what people are looking for
in their lives. Of course, since we work in techno-
logical development, we strive to be one, two or
three steps ahead. And it is with this accelerated
pace that we have identified the trends we are
presenting in this document to serve as inspiration
for the future of other organizations, and at the
end of the day, to let you know how Ubiwhere is
shaping the future.

22 23
on-demand. Machine learning primitives will
become widely available at very low latencies and
accessible to swarms of vehicles, industrial sys-
tems, our portable devices, intelligent assistants,
logistic facilities and every connected device,
driving economies of scale through optimization at
the edge.
The first tests with 5G technology have al-
ready started and telecom operators will launch
5G-enabled services in many cities worldwide
across 2019. Simultaneously, technology provid-
ers have begun to produce the next generation of
hardware that will enable new revenue streams
and business models for traditional operators and
MVNOs, based on new software capabilities, with
dynamic resource allocation, edge-computing
capabilities built in, to enable data-intensive use
cases from 5G bandwidth, and new devices are
built with the new state of the world in mind.
1
SOFTWARE EATS
NETWORKING
It can often feel like we’re done connecting peo-
ple. However, over the next 5 years, we’ll still need
to connect the remaining 4 billion of the world’s
population. With them, 30 billion more devices will
come online. To manage this ever growing influx of
new devices, we’ll need to scale our human-heavy
processes. Software-Defined Networking, Network
Function Virtualization, and Infrastructure as a
Service will allow us to use the same principles
that apply today, to a world where we’ll need to
make sense of extreme interconnectedness and
where people and devices will compete for band-
width, resources, and available intelligence. The
large-scale data pipelines that are now in a few
servers, will move to the edge and be available

24 25
the opportunities of an almost fully digital econo-
my. Uncovering key insights will enable us to make
progress that has historically been held back by
locked up data and an inability to align market
and government incentives. The gradual uptake
of automation in these sectors, the growing use
of predictive systems and large-scale sensing,
will lower costs and expose current inefficiencies,
leaving market agents no choice but to cooperate
effectively. Governance will be key to avoid in-
cumbent monopolies, in very much the same way
intangibles and capital deployment have allowed
them to emerge in today’s digital markets.
We are already seeing these changes take place
with companies like OpenDoor in real estate,
LambdaSchool in education or Flexport in freight
transportation creating entirely new business models
and incentive systems for industries that have typ-
ically been extremely hard on new entrants. This is
just the beginning, as more data-enabled companies
move into the value chain and offer products and
services that drive tremendous productivity gains in
areas where stagnant processes and an inability to
create scalable software has impeded faster growth.
2
SOFTWARE
(ALSO)
EATS LOW
PRODUCTIVITY
Today, while we’ve brought a number of key indus-
trial and business sectors online, GDP growth and
intangible assets show us that we’ve left very large
swathes of the economy untouched. Construction,
Education, Law, Healthcare and Manufacturing, a
large % of countries’ total production, still strug-
gles to see the same effects in scale driven by the
application of software and digital assets. New
business and public-private partnership models
emerge as the role of the state gets redefined by
its ability to work within the constraints and with

26 27
3
DATA AS
CURRENCY
Cryptoassets and crypto projects have started
paving the path to a new infrastructure. While it is
very unlikely that we’ll see crypto scaling reaching
mass adoption in the next 5 years due to funda-
mental roadblocks, we will undoubtedly discover
its first applications in instances where we need
disintermediated interactions. Programmable
contracts and hard-coded SLAs, recognized by
common law and enforced in traditional institu-
tions, will remove the need for some of today’s
intermediaries to exist and lower the costs of a
transaction between parties. Smart contracts and
unalterable, easily auditable ledgers will allow
data and digital assets to take the place of insti-
tutions and for access to the value of this data to
happen seamlessly, based on multi-party authori-
zation mechanisms. One example could be that of
the access/ on-demand economy, where parties
can access goods and services in a seamless way.
For example, in transportation, producers can
ensure their goods reach customers through
logistics providers with point-to-point smart con-
tracts removing the need for third-party platforms.
Similarly, private companies can provide services
to public institutions through decentralized market-
places, in which execution will be tracked and mon-
itored through the blockchain. Individuals will also
be able to provide and remove access to their data
on demand, particularly in their relationships with
healthcare or insurance providers. This will make
data a particularly scarce currency, allowing institu-
tions, rather than aggregators, to retain a lot of the
control they have relinquished in today’s economy.
Ubiwhere was a finalist in 2018’s Innovation
Prize of the Portuguese Mint and Official Print-
ing Office (INCM). The main objective of the
project is to provide users of public and shared

28 29
4
DIGITAL IDOLS
eSports, digital celebrities, virtual communities,
and personalized digital assistants will become
second nature to the generation that was “born
online”. This revolution has already begun and,
although it will not be televised, it will certainly be
live-streamed, with eyes and ears glued to smart-
phones everywhere. The 2017 League of Legends
championship, held in Beijing, had an audience
roughly equivalent to the Superbowl. Total rev-
enue from the eSports industry is expected to
total upwards of $900M, an increase of 82% from
2017’s extremely impressive numbers. Meanwhile,
digital gaming communities continue to grow, as
Fortnite reached 200M users in just over a year,
with revenue per user sitting at an impressive $96,
roughly twice that of Google + Facebook + Twitter
+ Snapchat (combined!) and is increasingly a place
transportation with an intelligent reward sys-
tem, capable of creating a digital wallet and
generating virtual coins when purchasing tick-
ets at transport entities associated with the
project. In addition, the technology platform re-
sulting from this idea will integrate the ticketing
modules of transport operators (with a concept
of safe and decentralized transactions - block-
chain), providing an online marketplace, where
the virtual currencies generated may be used for
the acquisition of products and services of the
project’s partners.

30 31
5
LARGE-SCALE
SENSING
TURNS INTO
PREDICTION
Large swathes of data composed of millions of
sensors, as well as miniaturization, coupled with
narrow AI, leads us to uncover insights and un-
lock economies of scale in quality of life, industry,
workplace productivity, healthcare, agriculture
and logistics that were never before possible. The
explosion of sensing capabilities cheaply available
will create highly specific datasets (and corre-
sponding labeling) we didn’t think possible. These
sensors will collect real-time intelligence from
devices and locations where it has historically
(alongside many other games) where adults come
together online. Virtual celebrities like Hatsune
Miku, Gorillaz and other digital alter egos emerg-
ing out of these innovative worlds, inspired by ours
but superpowered by technology, will continue to
grow in popularity and become real-life assistants
and companions to many of us. Not only will they
change entertainment, but they will permeate into
every part of our lives, like Ada, the AI healthcare
assistant that helps patients get access to medical
assistance on demand.

32 33
been kept siloed or where it has been entirely
unavailable. Labeling, categorizing and interpret-
ing this data at scale will enable AI to extract
insights which allow us to more accurately predict
behavior and automate processes which previous-
ly seemed beyond our reach. Predictive mainte-
nance, routing, natural disaster, threat modeling,
health conditions, greenhouse and natural crop
growth conditions, self-healing systems and better
manufacturing pipelines will all start to emerge as
humans, assisted by deep learning, parameterize
systems that were opaque before, but are now
available for technology to crack open. Human
operators will now be able to address risk factors
before their consequences become irreparable
and machine-led systems will solve and optimize
minor issues with no intervention.
This deeply rooted belief is at the heart of many
of Ubiwhere’s designs for Smart Cities like Cit-
ibrain’s vertical solutions, the Urban Platform,
where cities will be able to act on their consol-
idated and previously unmanageable datasets,
or even new spin-offs such as Thumbeo or
Unicle, in which the ability to gather intelligence
at scale predicates the dramatic improvements
one can make to mobility management, for cor-
porate fleets, citizens, car makers, and infra-
structure providers.

34 35
6
SHARED
AUTONOMY
Roy Amara, former Stanford alum and president of
the Institute of the Future coined the expression
that better defines technology forecasting when
he said: “We tend to overestimate the effect of
a technology in the short run and underestimate
the effect in the long run”. This is certainly true of
vehicle autonomy, particularly as more and more
companies pour into this space and get vehi-
cles out on the street. While we don’t think we’ll
have full, consumer-grade autonomy next year
(sorry, Waymo!), we do think these investments
and signs of progress will compound and verti-
cal-specific use cases for autonomy will emerge
ahead of full consumerization. Regulators and
public authorities will have a big role to play to
allow autonomous vehicles to take priority, gain
the right of way, and offer novel shared transpor-
tation options. Outside urban scenarios, fixed-
route transportation will be quickly surpassed by
autonomous electric vehicles, radically changing
logistics and public transportation. These will offer
dramatic improvements to both our mid and long-
range traffic patterns first, by unlocking the first
large-scale heavy fleet coordination, then mobile
productivity and finally, our consumer-centric
use cases. As parts of our road network become
accessible to new entrants, we’ll see regulators of-
fering advantages to both industry sectors (whose
productivity gains will happen overnight), as well
as to transportation providers who will reduce the
load that regular cars impose on our cities.
At Ubiwhere, we are building the infrastructure
and the services that will allow this to happen.
Our Smart Lamppost solution is our bet on the
future of infrastructure with computing and co-
ordination happening in real-time, with extreme-
ly low latencies and taking advantage of cut-
ting-edge networking technologies. We’ve also

36 37
spun off Unicle, our V2X technology product that
offers vehicle-makers, infrastructure provid-
ers and the service industry the ability to build
technology for the next generation of people who
will be online while on the move with better than
ever quality of service and experience.
7
UNBUNDLED
MOBILITY (AND
AGGREGATION)
When we look at cities, we’ll see urban mobility,
in particular, becoming completely unbundled.
Micro-mobility will solve our problems in city
centers and mid-range mobility will find its feet
with new form factors allowing commuters to
efficiently get to where they need to go. In 2018
we’ve seen the explosion of micro-mobility provid-
ers in cities. Dockless bike and scooter sharing has
taken over most of our cities, created new urban
planning problems we do not yet fully know how to
solve, and forced municipalities to fight back and
reclaim sidewalk space. Citizens, however, contin-
ue to adopt these services. The future is yet to be

38 39
defined and both the markets and our institutions
will move to adjust and adapt to it. As more mobil-
ity options become available that disincentive and
cannibalize the use of cars, bringing cars to the
city centers will become more expensive. Citizens
will initially bear the cost of fragmentation, but
as the market evolves, and A to B transportation
becomes commoditized, aggregation becomes in-
evitable as the job and mobility distribution moves
to large players who have the tech stack and the
business model to make this happen seamlessly.
This will turn vehicle providers into pure brand
plays, differentiated by functionality. Uber has
already committed to moving into this platform
space and has acquired micro-mobility providers
such as JUMP, in order to make this happen.
As large mobility companies both forcedly and
willingly play nice with our public institutions, we’ll
see true multi-modality emerge, with cost-effec-
tiveness and comfort going through the roof. More
competition for a role in our commutes and our
daily errands will create better options for citi-
zens. Regulatory oversight and a bird’s eye view on
urban needs will make sure they are accessible to
all, reach underserved communities, solve social
problems and that cooperation emerges between
market agents.
At Ubiwhere, our mobility and urban platforms
are built to solve two primary needs in this
space: 1) new entrants can build solutions in
weeks rather than years and 2) ensuring they
share adequate levels of data and are compli-
ant with local needs and rules. In turn, public
decision-makers can have total clarity into their
urban spaces and guarantee coordination be-
tween mobility providers with full visibility into
traffic, parking, air quality and a number of oth-
er dimensions of public life that go beyond pure
economics and optimize for improving people’s
quality of life.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE
40 41
ABOUT UBIWHERE
Founded in 2007, Ubiwhere is focused on
Research, Development and Innovation of soft-
ware-based solutions in the areas of Smart
Cities, Telecom and Future Internet, and New
Technologies. As an innovative and technological
company, the skills of our team are one of our
differentiating factors. Our team (about 50 em-
ployees, more than 90% with a Master degree),
is one of the pillars of the company’s success
and is prepared to face the biggest challenges in
the market.
Ubiwhere cooperates with leading technology
companies which value our partnership and rec-
ognise Ubiwhere’s large-scale contribution to their
creative and innovative projects. We’re committed
to ensuring the best practices at quality manage-
ment level holding certifications such as ISO9001
and CMMI-Dev Level 3.

42 43
We have the innate desire of changing the World,
the reason why we create, design and develop
solutions which aim at improving everyone’s lives.
Ubiwhere headquarters
WHAT’S NEXT
While the long arc of technology history will contin-
ue to awe us with its mysteries, its complexity and
interconnectedness will always make it very hard
for anyone to predict what the future holds. We
believe that focusing on the hardest, most impact-
ful problems is still the right choice. The solutions
we build will continue to shape people’s lives as
we move forward: clean air, sustainable mobility,
livable spaces, privacy, connectivity, productivity -
solving real problems is the only way to ensure we
will continue to be a part of the future.
At Ubiwhere, we are investing in best-in-class
emergent technology: you will find us using ma-
chine-learning, building smart contracts and
digital currencies, prototyping vehicular commu-
nication systems and next-generation networks,
or tinkering with the future of consumer-grade
sensing devices. Products such as Citibrain,

FORECAST 2019
Unicle, rProbe or Smart Lamppost are just a few of
the many extraordinary examples of the technolo-
gy we are fortunate enough to have created which
are now a meaningful part of the lives and of the
future of citizens around the globe.
While we don’t know exactly what the next steps
will be, we do know, assuredly, that good things
will come from our daily effort and dedication.
Terms such as autonomy, urban mobility or 5G will
become part of our daily vocabulary, yet the focus
will continue to be on the research and develop-
ment of technology for people, which will effec-
tively improve their quality of life.

46 47
SUITING THE FUTURE
www.ubiwhere.com

Forecast 2019

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Forecast 2019

Similar to Forecast 2019 (20)

More from Ubiwhere

More from Ubiwhere (14)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Forecast 2019