Executive Summary
We are making strides towards an intelligent world. When looking ahead to 2030, we hope that the future will bring improved quality of life, sustainable and green diets, and more comfortable living spaces. We also look forward to the end of traffic congestion and pollution in cities, fully green energy, and a wide range of new digital services. We dream of robots that can do repetitive and dangerous work for us so that we can devote more time and energy to more valuable, creative work, and to our personal interests. These are the goals that drive exploration in every industry. Huawei has held in-depth discussions with well-known scholars, customers, and partners in the industry to explore the intelligent world. We have found that the rapid advancement of the intelligent world has given rise to an increasing number of new technologies and scenarios and the exponential growth of related industry parameters. Therefore, Huawei has systematically updated the Intelligent World 2030 that was released in 2021 to show our latest vision for the scenarios and trends in 2030 and adjust relevant forecast data accordingly. Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, Intelligent World 2030. In this report, we examine the prospects for the intelligent world over the next decade by analyzing macro trends in healthcare, food, living spaces, transportation, cities, enterprises, energy, and digital trust. We believe in the infinite possibilities of the Intelligent World , but constant collaboration and exploration among many different industries will be required to build a better future
Outlook for Healthcare:
Smart Health Services Enhance Quality of Life
Outlook for Food:
Data-driven Food Production for More Bountiful, Inclusive, and "Green" Diets
Outlook for Living Spaces:
Personalized Spaces with Novel Interactive Experiences
Outlook for Transportation:
Smart, Low-carbon Transportation Opens up the Mobile Third Space
Outlook for Cities:
New Digital Infrastructure Makes Cities More Human and Livable
Outlook for Enterprises:
New Productive Forces, New Production Models, New Resilience
Outlook for Energy:
Intelligent, Green Energy for a Better Planet
Outlook for Digital Trust:
Technologies and Rules Creating a Trusted Digital Future
Outlook for Energy: Intelligent, Green Energy for a Better Planet
The energy world will be centered on electricity, with green hydrogen becoming a major playerby 2030. The solar PV and energy storage
industries will develop rapidly, expanding froma few countries to the entire world. Powerplants will generate electricity from renewablesources in lakes and near-shore marine areas. An”energy Internet” will emerge, utilizing digitaltechnologies to connect generation, grid, load,and storage, including virtual power plants andan energy cloud. Network-wide intelligence willbe a reality Renewables will account for
65% of all electricity generation
globally
Outlook for Digital Trust: Technologies and Rules Creating a Trusted Digital Future
By 2030, technologies such as digital identities,post-quantum cryptography (PQC), digital
watermarking, privacy-enhancing computation(PEC), and AI provenance and verification
will lay a solid foundation for the sustainabledevelopment of digital civilizationPEC technologies will be used in
more than 50% of computing
scenarios.
100% of ICT systems will have
a quantum-safe capacity or the
capacity to migrate to quantumsafe solutions.
Healthcare Smart Health Services Enhance Quality of Life
Over the past decade, there have been significant
improvements in people’s health and well-being.
According to a United Nations report, global life
expectancy at birth reached 73.3 years in 2024,
an increase of 8.4 years since 1995.1
As people live
longer, finding ways to enhance the quality of life
is becoming a top priority.
As the global population ages, the demand for
healthcare is expected to surge. By 2030, there
will be about 994 million elderly individuals, and
this figure is expected to rise to 1.6 billion by
2050.2
According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), global spending on healthcare is already
outpacing global economic growth, and by 2030,
there will be a shortage of 10 million healthcare
workers worldwide,3
5.7 million of which will be
nurses.4
Additionally, the negative impact of chronic
diseases and subhealth in general is increasing.
World Health Statistics 2024 reports that seven of
the top 10 causes of death are non-communicable
diseases (NCDs), and the premature mortality rate
is rising. The probability of dying between the ages
of 30 and 70 from cardiovascular diseases, cancer,
diabetes, or chronic respiratory diseases is now
22.7%5
.
Population growth is outpacing the production
of healthcare resources. According to the World
Population Prospects 2024, the global population
is expected to reach 10.3 billion by the mid2080s,
up from 8.2 billion in 2024. This growing
population will place additional strain on
healthcare resources, making it harder to achieve
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For
example, in 2023, Africa’s population was twice
that of Europe, and by 2050, it is expected to be
3.5 times larger.6
However, healthcare resources
remain unevenly distributed—Germany currently
has 16 times more hospital beds per 10,000
people than Nigeria.7
The aging population will
put even more pressure on healthcare resources.
By 2080, 2.2 billion people will be at or above the
age of 65, and they will outnumber the children
under the age of 18.8
To address these challenges,
countries and regions must invest in human capital
to ensure that healthcare and quality education
are accessible to all.9
In the future, healthcare must shift from being treatment-focused to comprehensive, life-cycle
health management. By prioritizing universal access and improving the quality of care, the
future healthcare systems will be able to offer continuous and efficient services. This will
involve building an integrated and seamless health management network and establishing
a city-centric smart health system to improve public health.
Direction for exploration: Unlocking the value of health data, and shifting the focus from reactive treatment to proactive prevention
According to the WHO, 60% of related factors to illnesses are correlated to lifestyle,10 making healthy
habits essential for well-being. With user consent, wearable devices can collect and analyze realtime health data, and offer predictive insights and medical guidance with the assistance of a unified
AI architecture. This shift toward proactive prevention integrates health management into daily life,
connecting disease control, hospitals, health centers, and families to reduce the risk of a more serious
health condition arising.
Snapshot from the future: Focusing on real-time health status monitoring to facilitate real-time, efficient health management
Thanks to the advancements in the Internet,
IoT, and AI, as well as the widespread adoption
of wearable devices and home monitoring
equipment, by 2040, at least a quarter of
outpatient care, preventive care, long-term care,
and health services will move online.11
Specifically, these technologies will be used to
analyze real-time health data, medical responses,
and clinical outcomes to identify potential health
risks. For example, AI can detect the early signs
of heart disease or pre-diabetic conditions by
analyzing and warning users about anomalous
heart rate and blood pressure measurements,
allowing for early intervention. Additionally,
through interventions in nutrition, exercise, and
sleep, users can be guided to gradually change
their unhealthy habits and develop a healthier
lifestyle, reducing the likelihood of illness. For
instance, a study by Stanford University showed
that continuous monitoring of heart rate and skin
temperature through smartwatches and other
wearables could help AI detect early signs of
infection, as these powerful monitoring devices
can take and analyze up to 250,000 measurements
per day.12
Moreover, a comprehensive health management
platform could allow hospitals, doctors, users,
and families to collectively access and view health
data. This data-sharing mechanism ensures that
doctors can stay updated on their patients’ health
in real time, both inside and outside the hospital,
leading to more accurate diagnoses and better
treatment decisions.