UK tech and telco – trends and insights roundup for 2024
The tech and telco landscape in the United Kingdom continued to evolve in 2024, reflecting a mix of innovation, shifting consumer priorities, grappling with the surge of artificial intelligence (AI) and persistent challenges. This article dives deep into the trends shaping consumer behaviour in mobile phones, AI, virtual reality, and beyond.
Consumer attitudes towards AI
YouGov continued tracking the evolving sentiments around AI and its proliferation in 2024. With generative AI becoming increasingly humanlike with each passing iteration, we sought to understand whether consumers feel responsible towards treating AI well. A quarter of Brits said humans have a great deal of responsibility towards treating an AI with Artificial General Intelligence well (27%).
But the idea of further advancements in AI are met with scepticism – 43% feel that the development of AGI would make society worse. This apprehensiveness could be the outcome of fears around AI being used to create digitally altered content and the prevalence of AI generated content overall.
Yet there remains substantial demand for AI applications across a variety of use-cases from personalised workout plans to help with budgeting. And consumers show varying levels of comfort to the use of AI in generating marketing and advertising material.
AI in the workplace and its impact on industry
A third of consumers worldwide believe that AI has boosted overall productivity in the workplace over the past year, but less than a fifth of Brits agree with that statement (18%). But substantial portion of Brits feel that the adoption of AI can have a positive impact on industries such as healthcare, IT and telco, manufacturing, transportation/distribution, retail, media, education, and hospitality.
While substantial portion of Brits see the potential for AI in healthcare, they remained sceptical about the use of AI-powered chatbots in tackling mental health issues. Generally speaking, consumers are likely to hold companies using chatbots accountable for any errors generated by those chatbots.
We also explored consumer opinion about the potential for the use of AI in industries such as game development, marketing and advertising and mobile phones.
About smartphones, new and old
We asked Brits what they do with old handsets, and most of them said they just keep it around (52%). Only a fifth of them said they sold the device to someone else (20%). This is probably because of the relatively low interest in purchasing refurbished handsets – only a fifth of Brits said they would consider getting their hands on a refurbished smartphone (22%).
But what happens when customers crack the screen of their smartphone device? A plurality of them say they would simply continue using them until it becomes a major issue (42%).
We also asked consumers their opinion on the age at which youngsters should start owning a smartphone.
Are VR headsets cool?
Virtual reality, mixed reality, and augmented reality headsets such as the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and Microsoft Hololens (sometimes grouped together under the name “extended reality”) can allow users to play video games, simulate flight, virtually visit tourist hotspots, test drive cars, and much more.
But beyond the technological capabilities, they are devices that are worn on the human head – and therefore fashion items, of a sort. But most Brits who have worn them think they look uncool. Even so, Brits do see the usefulness of VR headsets for purposes such as gaming and travel.
Other key stories
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- MWC 2024: What Britons think of smart rings, robot dogs – and more
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- Most UK marketers not ready for a cookieless future
- Telegram - One of those apps that everyone has except you?
- How UK consumers are shopping for electronics this holiday season
- How do Brits decide on their large home appliance purchases