While the electronics industry might suffer through a down year, along with the rest of the larger economy, there are always interesting developments in products and technologies to look forward to. One bright spot is electric vehicles (EVs). Nearly every major brand is introducing highly competitive and reasonably priced vehicles for the 2023 model year. These EVs will continue to drive the demand for more semiconductors to support battery management, infotainment, self-driving, etc. The biggest challenge will be whether the limited availability and price of lithium for massive batteries will limit unit growth. New battery technologies are on the horizon but are still years out.
Edge AI wearables coming out next year will offer a lot of potential for the Metaverse, such as Meta’s next generation Oculus (or Quest) headset and the rumored headset from Apple. It is even possible that Apple could launch a glasses product in 2023. These products will drive the need for high-performance neural network processing in the energy and thermal envelop of a wearable device, creating new opportunities for novel technologies such as analog and neuromorphic computing.
A final trend for 2023 will be a first set of truly usable quantum computers from the large number of startups that have been funded over the last couple of years. Most of these players will continue to focus on quantum computing as a service (QaaS), but some will roll out the first chip-level proposals and prototypes for quantum processors that could be built into multiple end products.