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"The only constant in life is change," asserted the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus -- and boy, if he could only see us now, because the rate of change just keeps accelerating. And from an investing perspective, that means an awful lot to keep up with.
In this segment from the Motley Fool Money podcast, host Chris Hill asks senior analysts Ron Gross and Jason Moser which trends they see as most interesting for the year ahead. Gross takes a macro tech trend with obvious implications: The major U.S. cell service providers are beginning to seriously deploy 5G mobile networks that will offer 20 to 100 times faster data speeds. Moser, on the other hand, is intrigued by the transformative potential of podcasts: If on-demand companies like Netflix have already transformed the video world, is this the year podcasts really start changing how we consume audio?
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Jan. 4, 2019.
Chris Hill: What's a trend you're excited about this year, Ron?
Ron Gross: It piggybacks off of what Jason was just discussing. 5G technology, fifth-generation wireless cellular technology, is coming, and it's coming pretty quickly. It's going to be pretty exciting. It's going to make devices more capable of accessing the internet, it's going to deliver much faster speed than 4G, some say 20-100 times faster than 4G. Lots of companies are going to benefit here. The most common names would be AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. But I think Nokia, even Apple will benefit as people upgrade to 5G-enabled phones. It's going to be a really exciting trend to watch from an investment perspective, but also from a consumer perspective, because I think we'll all benefit.
Jason Moser: I'm glad you mentioned Apple there. That's another point with 5G. I think they're going to be a little bit behind others in getting their devices up to speed. But once that does happen, that's going to be another catalyst there in the upgrading.
For me, I'm excited about podcasts and where podcasts are heading.
Gross: Shameless plug!
Moser: I'm not going to just pat ourselves on the back here too much, but it's worth noting that you and Mac and our partners here, you had the senses to make some early bets in this market back in 2010 and 2011. And lo and behold, now, in 2019, we've got a full-fledged family of podcasts. They're doing very well. We've seen Sirius XM acquire Pandora, noting in their call that, to their dismay, they passed on podcasts for a while. They admitted that mistake, and they're going to start putting some resources into podcasts and building out that environment.
I think we're in a day and age now where Netflix really changed the game for content for people being able to watch what they want, when they want, and where they want. Now, we're seeing the same thing play out on the audio side. We're able to give people what they want, where they want it, when they want it. It's nice to be a part of it.
