Artificial Intelligence and 5G Mobile Networks Equip Chinese Millennials With a 'sixth Sense' Entrepreneurship and Innovation Advantage

Rocky Scopelliti, Futurologist & Author of Youthquake 4.0

Rocky Scopelliti, Futurologist & Author of Youthquake 4.0

The battle between east and west is on for the technological, intellectual and investment superiority of the 4th Industrial Revolution. For Millennials, mobile technology became a sixth sense and with China leading the world on deploying 5G mobile networks and artificial intelligence, it will put China’s more than 415 million Millennials at the cutting edge of global innovation and entrepreneurship. That was the message in my key note address at Asia’s largest technology event - Mobile World Congress 2019 in Shanghai where I presented insights from my new book Youthquake 4.0 - A Whole Generation and The New Industrial Revolution.

Mobile technology has globally connected, empowered and entertained the Millennial generation. They are now living a mobile first world and with 58 per cent of the global Millennial population living in Asia Pacific, the speed, scale and impact they will have will be profound.

Mobile internet penetration is predicted to increase from 48 per cent in 2016 to 60 per cent by 2020 globally adding approximately 1.9 billion smartphones, raising the smartphone penetration to 5.7 billion globally. But three new ‘smartphone super-powers’ will emerge by 2025 with China ranked #1 with 1,458M connections, followed by India with 1,171M connections then Indonesia with 410M connections . The smartphone has become the primary device for our social, commercial, economic and cultural inclusion contributing 4.8 percent of global GDP or US3.9 trillion. Let’s just pause and think about that.

Imagine for a moment what impact connecting 1 billion more people will do for digital, economic and social inclusion. What entrepreneurship and innovation will this bring to the world? In 2016, the United Nations declared the internet a human right. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), states “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. Section 32 of Article 19 includes “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet”.

Millennials have not only grown up with wireless technology, they will most likely also drive the demand on future devices, networks, services and media due to their technological proficiency and ever-increasing high expectation levels. It’s what social researcher Mark McCrindle refers to as ‘expectation inflation’.

If we consider for a moment the time that it took key technologies to be adopted, the smartphone has broken all records. In just 10 years, 97 percent of Chinese Millennials have adopted a smartphone – far higher than their American counterparts.

In this very short time, an economy valued in trillions has emerged. Beyond devices, services and network subscriptions, in just 10 years an app economy has boomed to an estimated US$1.3 trillion in 2016 driven by 3.4 billion users spending more than 1.6 trillion hours using apps, equating to an average US$379 per person from mobile apps, in-app advertising and mobile commerce. The exponential growth of this economy is projected to rise five-fold to US$6.3 trillion by 2021 as device base growth virtually doubles to 6.3 billion users in 2021 averaging US$1,008 per person.

China has now become the world’s largest ecommerce market, accounting for 42 per cent of the value of worldwide ecommerce transactions – up from 1 per cent a decade ago. China has also become a global leader in mobile payments with 11x the transaction value of the United States with more than 460 million users processing US$9 trillion .

The road to 5G networks is evolving rapidly, preliminary standards are now in place. In China, 5G spectrum has just been auctioned and assigned. Hype on the possibilities of these networks is reaching fever pitch at Mobile World Congress in Shanghai with billions of objects, devices, sensors and other technologies yet to be imagined, reportedly becoming connected. What is clear however, is that ‘Speed-to-content has become the new king’.

Early in our digital revolution, content became king, but as we move into the 4th Industrial Revolution, it’s the speed to that content and apps that has become the new king. Latency has become an important indicator of expectation for Millennials experiencing mobile on-demand video services. A neuroscience study by Ericsson and Vodafone to understand the impact of varying network performance on smartphone users found a direct correlation between consumers’ subconscious (emotional responses) and physical reactions to time-to-content on mobile apps.

Millennials have not only grown up with wireless technology, they will most likely also drive the demand on future devices, networks, services and media due to their technological proficiency and ever-increasing high expectation levels

They study revealed some interesting insights such as:

• Heart rate rises by 44 per cent for Millennials who experience delays of just two seconds while uploading their selfie, referred to as ‘selfie stress’.

• With the Auto Play feature, any video loading delays on Facebook were found to be more stressful than delays on YouTube.

• Millennial and streaming natives were found to be less tolerant to delays in loading online videos with 35 per cent more stressed with mobile delays than those older than 35 years.

• Millennials were most stressed at six seconds of video delays and after eight seconds, they’d completely lost interest in watching the video.

Millennials gave rise to the use of both social media and camera technology in smartphones that contributed the word ‘selfie’ to our vocabulary. What the Ericsson and Vodafone study has now importantly identified, is that delays in uploading selfies leads to stress. For example, a one second delay led to a significant rise in cognitive demand with stress levels rising for 47 per cent of participants and at a two second delay, 47 per cent of participants lost interest in the task. At eight seconds, most participants gave up trying to upload their selfie. The key point here is that the expectation inflation effect needs to be very carefully considered for any organisation in how they design their apps or services in the experience economy. This point hasn’t gone unnoticed in China’s approach to the digitization of its economy.

While China has a trade deficit in services overall, it now has a trade surplus in digital services of over US$15 billion per year. The digital capacity and shift towards a consumption rather than investment economic models in the Chinese economy, was fueled by three key factors:

1. Millennial scale. China has a high concentration of Millennials in its population (31 per cent), but the scale of that cohort is enormous - more than 415 million people. That scale is not found in any other region or country. More broadly, other demographic groups within China have developed an unquenchable thirst for mobile connectivity.

2. Tech giants. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have developed integrated ecosystems from their platforms traversing many aspects of people’s lives and becoming embedded within the lifestyles on Chinese people. While commerce is Alibaba’s main revenue source, digital media and cloud computing are rapidly growing businesses with customers in 2017 numbering 900 million. WeChat is the fastest growing Tencent service with customers in 2017 numbering 980 million. Online games are Tencent’s main revenue source.

3. Government support. The Chinese government enables digitization by continuing to be a major investor in, and consumer of, digital technologies, pursuing supportive policies including promoting competition (avoiding excessive regulation), managing labour markets transitions to digital.

According to McKinsey, new applications of the internet could account for up to 22 per cent of China’s GDP growth through 2025 translating into 4 trillion to 14 trillion renminbi. Digitisation is not only seen as benefiting the economy through productivity (estimated to be 22 per cent by 2025), but growth through market expansion.

The Internet-of-Things through increased connectivity and digital content provides the most significant potential uplift from the current trajectory for consumer electronics, followed by automation in the automotive industry and efficiency gains from digitalising financial services. Of interest are projected declines in the real estate and healthcare area from the information enablement and adoption of technologies of those sectors.

The digitization of China’s economy is expected to boost productivity, create innovation and stimulate growth. The three forces that are predicted to shift or create 10-45 per cent of industry revenue pools through value-chain restructuring by 2030 are disintermediation (cutting out the middleman), disaggregation (separating processes into components) and dematerialization (shifting from the physical to digital form).

Consumer, retail, freight and logistics sectors stand to benefit most from disintermediation while automotive and mobility and healthcare stand to benefit the most from disaggregation through value shifts.

China has a widely communicated vision to be a digital world power and is significantly investing in pursuit of that dream. For example, the State Council-led Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program has given rise to 8,000 + incubators and accelerator programs. The government’s guiding fund has invested US$27.4 billion in venture capital and private equity investors. Investments in next generation 5G wireless networks over the coming years are estimated to be in the order of US$180 billion.

Artificial Intelligence - ‘Made in China’. In 2017, the State Council released a policy statement of intent indicating that China will be heavily investing to become the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, building an industry worth US$150 billion. “China will become the world’s premier artificial intelligence innovation center”. China’s capabilities in advanced and emerging technologies have lagged other major technology areas of Europe and the Americas, but after a decade of supportive industrial policy, will help it catch up and lead in some areas.

Contrary to popular commentary about the fears associated with the loss of jobs from technologies such as AI, an overwhelming number of Millennials think that technology creates jobs (78.6 per cent) as opposed to destroying jobs (21.4 per cent). This is unsurprising given the technological proficiency of this generation but does emphasise the optimism they have for technology’s role in business and the workplace.

For many years, science fiction has filled our imaginations with the possibilities of technologies – many of which have become a reality –while many remain as an undeveloped sixth sense such as the augmentation of technology with human life. The symbiotic relationship between China’s highly educated, media saturated and connected Millennial generation and the emerging technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution, will see China emerge as a entrepreneurship and innovation superpower.