Huawei Releases the Intelligent World 2030 Report to Explore Trends in the Next Decade

Huawei, along with industry partners, held the Intelligent World 2030 Forum. David Wang, Executive Director and President of ICT Products & Solutions of Huawei, released the Intelligent World 2030 report with a keynote speech on Exploring the Intelligent World 2030.

This is the first time that Huawei has used quantitative and qualitative methods to systematically describe the intelligent world in the next decade and forecast industry trends, helping industries identify new opportunities and discover new value.

Over the past three years, Huawei has conducted in-depth exchanges with more than 1,000 academics, customers, and partners in the industry, organized more than 2,000 workshops, and drawn on data and methods from authoritative organizations, such as the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and World Health Organization.

Huawei has derived insights from scientific journals such as Nature and IEEE, and drawn wisdom from relevant industry associations and consulting firms, as well as experts within and outside Huawei. Through these efforts, Huawei has developed the Intelligent World 2030 report, providing insights into ICT technology and application trends in the next decade.

The report proposes eight cross-disciplinary and cross-domain directions for exploration at the macro level. It explains how ICT technologies can solve critical problems and challenges of human development, and what new opportunities can be brought to organizations and individuals.

At the industry level, the report explores the future technologies and development directions of communications networks, computing, digital power, and intelligent automotive solutions.

Wang said, “30 years ago, we decided to enrich life through communications. 10 years ago, we decided to connect every corner of the world, to build a better, connected world. Now, our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home, and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. We firmly believe that a brilliant intelligent world is arriving at an accelerated pace.”

Many heavyweight guests were invited to speak at the forum, including renowned futurist Steven Johnson, founding and rotating chairman of the World Electric Vehicle Association Chen Qingquan, Co-President of Roland Berg Global Management Committee Denis Depoux, and Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) Wang Zhiqin. They shared their insights on the intelligent world and discussed how ICT can better drive socio-economic development.

As the prominent futurist and science author Steven Johnson said, we are entering an era of exponential growth. The coming decades will be characterized by a golden age of collaboration between human and machine intelligence, and algorithms will enhance human intelligence. As technology grows exponentially, all of society will benefit.

The Intelligent World 2030 Forum is the first time that Huawei has systematically shared cutting-edge research and insights into the next decade. This sharing of knowledge will bring great value to social development, especially for global digital transformation and digital economy.

Imagination will determine how far we will go in the future, action will determine how quickly we will reach the future, and the best way to predict the future is to create it. There are still plenty of challenges to overcome on the road to the intelligent world. As David Wang said at the end of his speech, “We believe, the greatest wisdom is found in shared ideas. Dreams are the key driver of social progress. Moving towards the next decade, let’s work together to shape a better, intelligent world.”

Overview of the report:

Outlooks for the intelligent world 2030: We will live a better life in 2030, with more food, larger living spaces, renewable energy, digital services, and no traffic. We will be able to relinquish repetitive and dangerous work to machines, and have secure access to digital services. To meet these needs, we have set eight directions for exploration, including health, food, living, and transportation.

In 2030, we will be able to identify potential health problems by computing and modeling public health and medical data, shifting the focus from treatment to prevention. Precise medical solutions powered by IoT and AI will become a reality.

In 2030, vertical farms unaffected by climate will be applied on a large scale, so that we can provide green food for all. 3D printing will make it possible for us to create artificial meat to meet our nutritional needs.

Our homes and offices will become zero-carbon buildings. Next-generation IoT technology will build adaptive home environments that understand our needs.

New energy vehicles will become the mobile “third space”. New aircraft will make emergency services more efficient, reduce the cost of medical supplies, and change the way we commute.

In addition to healthcare, food, living spaces, and transportation, Huawei has also explored the future of cities, energy, enterprises, and digital trust. We look forward to working with you to explore endless possibilities in 2030.

Communications Network 2030: In the next decade, the objects and boundaries of network connectivity will continue to expand. By 2030, as technologies such as XR, naked-eye 3D display, digital touch, and digital smell develop further, “digital vision, digital touch, and digital smell” will create an immersive and disruptive experience through next-generation networks. At the same time, as networks evolve from connecting billions of people to hundreds of billions of things, network design will change from focusing on human cognition to machine cognition. We will see an emergence of multi-level computing infrastructure for hundreds of billions of things and massive data, as well as computing power networks that provide connectivity. In addition, four future network scenarios will gradually become a reality. They are the networks that will deliver a consistent experience for homes, offices, and vehicles, satellite broadband Internet, industrial Internet, and computing power network.

As part of the intelligent world, the communications network of 2030 will evolve towards cubic broadband networks, deterministic experience, AI-native, HCS, security and trustworthiness, and green and low-carbon networks. Huawei predicts that the total number of global connections will reach 200 billion by 2030. At the same time, enterprise network access, home broadband access, and individual wireless access will exceed 10 Gbit/s, ushering in an era of 10 Gbit/s connectivity.

Computing 2030: By 2030, the digital and physical worlds will be seamlessly converged, allowing people and machines to interact perceptually and emotionally. AI will become ubiquitous and help us transcend human limitations. It will serve as microscopes and telescopes of scientists, enhancing our understanding of everything from the tiniest quarks to the largest cosmological phenomena. Industries already making extensive use of digital technology will become more intelligent with AI. Computing energy efficiency will increase dramatically, bringing us closer to zero-carbon computing. Digital technologies can become a tool for achieving the global goal of carbon neutrality.

Computing is approaching its physical limits, so innovation in software, architecture, and systems are needed. More importantly, the entire industry needs to jointly explore a new foundation for computing, break through the physical limits of semiconductors, and make computing greener, more secure, and more intelligent. Huawei predicts that by 2030, humanity will enter the yottabyte data era, with general-purpose computing power increasing by 10 times and AI computing power by 500 times.

Digital Power 2030: In the next decade, humanity will enter the digital power era, striving towards low-carbon development, electrification, and intelligent transformation. New renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic and wind power, will gradually replace fossil fuels. Power electronic technology and digital technology are being deeply converged to enable “bit to manage watt” throughout the energy system and realize various intelligent applications on the “energy cloud”. Huawei predicts that by 2030, solar energy will become one of our main power sources, the proportion of renewables in global electricity generation will be 50%, the share of electricity in final energy consumption is expected to exceed 30%, electric vehicles as a proportion of new vehicles sold will exceed 50%, and renewable energy will power 80% of digital infrastructure.

Intelligent Automotive Solution 2030: In the next decade, electrification and intelligence will be unstoppable, and ICT technologies will converge with the automotive industry. The automotive industry will witness the development of intelligent driving, intelligent spaces, intelligent services, and intelligent operations. Huawei hopes to use its ICT technologies to enable an intelligent automotive industry and help carmakers build better vehicles.

The ultimate goal of intelligent driving is to use technologies such as autonomous driving to greatly reduce the incidence of traffic accidents, and deliver efficient and seamless travel experiences to users. Intelligent driving has so far been mainly limited to closed roads like high-speed roads and campus roads, but it will gradually see more application on public roads, such as those in urban areas. Vehicles will become a new intelligent space. With the support of ICT, technologies like AI, biometric recognition, in-vehicle optical sensors, and AR/VR will bring new features to the cockpit. Intelligent vehicles will truly transform from a flexible mobile space to an intelligent living space that integrates the virtual and physical worlds. Huawei predicts that, by 2030, autonomous vehicles will account for 20% of new vehicles sold in China, electric vehicles will account for more than 50% of new vehicles sold, vehicles will come equipped with computing power of over 5,000 TOPS, and in-vehicle network transmission speed per link will exceed 100 Gbps.