As we reach the end of yet another fascinating year, we'll look back at some of the top trends in technology that made news in 2016.

1. Virtual reality

With big product launches from Oculus/Facebook, HTC/Valve, Samsung Gear VR, Sony, and Microsoft (although its HoloLens is technically augmented reality) in 2016, virtual reality saw a broader audience. According to Gartner, "There is going to be a moment when we collectively realize the value of virtual reality, and that's something different than we've had before." It is gradually finding a middle ground between what people wanted their devices to do and what they could do. Companies will rely on VR to reach consumers and this will be a new medium to provide a product experience that was never seen before.

However there are still a lot of things that aren't VR ready yet. Some of them include watching movies on a VR device, playing candy crush or similar games on VR by connecting it your smartphone.

Right now, 360 video largely gets billed as virtual reality. Eventually, though, audiences will learn to not only distinguish, but expect not to be passive observers of the medium as they are in television or movies. In the near future, as VR matures, we will see a gradual increase in the expectation amongst consumers and they would want to move around and interact with their surroundings.

Fig: VR headset sales 2016

Courtesy: virtual-reality-headsets-unit-sales-worldwide

1. Wearable technology

The market for wearable tech continues to explode and find new niches. And, despite reports of “lacklustre” sales of the Apple. Watch and others, smart watches lead the market.

The consumer wearables market include smart watches, glasses, fitness and health trackers, smart jewelry and others. And all of these devices are generating a tsunami of data, the implications of which we’re only beginning to understand. Check out these amazing facts about wearable technology trends which establishes that this technology is only growing by every passing year.

Fig: Wearable technology market trends

1. Bitcoin technology will be more in demand with financial institutions

Blockchain and Bitcoin have become mutually inseparable, however Blockchain is much more than just a collection of records for a cryptocurrency. A Blockchain is at its core a ledger of records, which is distributed across different parties. It can only be updated with the consensus of the majority of the participants it is shared with and is inerasable. 

The beauty of the Blockchain is that its applications go beyond cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain technology has seen adoption by the mainstream financial services industry. Some of the interesting ways blockchain could prove helpful to FinTech sector are:

• Smart contracts

They are basically the digital equivalent of their paper peers. Ethereum is particularly interesting in this context because the Ethereum Blockchain can contain smart contracts as account holding objects, which contain certain code functions and can interact with other existing contracts, store data or even send Ether to others. Large tech companies such as Microsoft are excited by the possibilities that this technology has opened up.

• Blockchain integration

Banks and other financial institutions may benefit from the transparency, security and other benefits that Blockchain technology has to offer but there will be a significant amount of integration required to make it all work. This means Blockchain needs to fit in with other banking systems such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) etc. There is already a buzz in this space.

A more detailed account of other interesting trends of Blockchain is discussed here.

2. Reusable Rockets

Thousands of rockets have flown into space, but not until 2015 did one return like this: it came down upright on a landing pad, steadily firing to control its descent, almost as if a movie of its launch were being played backward. If this can be done regularly and rockets can be refueled over and over, spaceflight could become a hundred times cheaper.

• Breakthrough

 Rockets that can launch payloads into orbit and then land safely.

• Why It Matters

Lowering the cost of flight would open the door to many new endeavors in space.

• Key Players in the New Space Industry
• SpaceX
• Blue Origin
• United Launch Alliance

Two tech billionaires made it happen. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin first pulled off a landing in November; Elon Musk’s SpaceX did it in December. The companies are quite different—Blue Origin hopes to propel tourists in capsules on four-minute space rides, while SpaceX already launches satellites and space station supply missions—but both need reusable rockets to improve the economics of spaceflight. A detailed report of this fantastic feat is documented here. One of landings of SpaceX in Texas is shown in the picture in the header.
 

3. 3D Printing Materials (Additive manufacturing)

Advances in 3D printing have already enabled 3D printing to use a wide range of materials, including advanced nickel alloys, carbon fiber, glass, conductive ink, electronics, pharmaceuticals and biological materials. These innovations are driving user demand, as the practical applications for 3D printers expand to more sectors, including aerospace, medical, automotive, energy and the military. The growing range of 3D-printable materials will drive a compound annual growth rate of 64.1 percent for enterprise 3D-printer shipments through 2019. These advances will necessitate a rethinking of assembly line and supply chain processes to exploit 3D printing.

Fig: Worldwide 3D printing industry forecast

Two extremely well-funded companies will be making their entrance into the 3D printing world in 2016: HP and Carbon3D. Both companies have plans to introduce new 3D printing technologies that address many of the shortcomings associated with 3D printing, including speed and surface finish. They both believe these shortcomings are holding back adoption from reaching a mass scale.

HP is calling its 3D printing technology Multi Jet Fusion, which claims to be up to 10 times faster than the fastest extrusion-based and selective laser sintering technologies when it was announced in Nov. 2014. Cabon3D's CLIP technology claims to be 25 to 100 times faster than leading 3D printing technologies on the market. Both technologies are likely to make at least some of 3D Systems' and Stratasys' existing technology portfolio appear inferior.

Read a more detailed report here.

Fig: Comparison of various commercial 3D printer by technology category

Along with the above mentioned technologies few other technologies have also made some noise. Some of them include driverless cars (primarily backed by companies like Uber, Google, and Tesla), Watson from IBM, which claims to be beyond AI has managed to gather great interest. All in all 2016 has turned out to witnessed great trends in some interesting technologies and hopefully we'll see more matured versions of these trends in years to follow.