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So you finally decided to strip that horrific wallpaper off the spare bedroom walls, or build that deck you鈥檝e been promising yourself, or do any one of the other things around the house you have plenty of time to imagine doing but no time to actually do.

You鈥檝e watched the how-to videos, seen it done on home improvement shows, and all seems clear in your head. But at the hardware store, faced with 37 varieties of cross-headed screw, you realize you should have made a shopping list slightly more sophisticated than: 鈥渨ood, screws, some kind of varnish.鈥�

The element of surprise

In August 2019, Google revealed what it called (it takes a lot to surprise Google about internet behavior). In a survey of 24,000 people in 10 countries, more than half reported watching online video in stores as they were shopping. Fifty-five percent of people weren鈥檛 relying on scribbled shopping lists or memory at all, they were re-watching the how-to video on their mobile and picking what they needed off the shelf.

鈥淚鈥檓 not a list guy,鈥� said one respondent, 鈥淚鈥檒l re-watch the video in the plumbing or electrical aisle to make sure I鈥檝e got everything I need.鈥� And, ten thousand product-placement marketers began trembling with excitement.

No one knows how long people have been doing this, but it could have only become possible as mobile connectivity improved. If they had to wait minutes to connect and initiate a video, people probably wouldn鈥檛 bother. What鈥檚 fascinating is that this use case for online video was invented by consumers 鈥� nobody thought to make videos specifically to be watched in store.

Expect the unexpected

One of the great expectations for 5G is that its low latency (sub 10 ms) will enable a series of applications that are currently roadblocked by 4G鈥檚 limitations. Crystal ball-gazing articles on the subject tend to agree on the list of upcoming miracles.

True self-driving vehicles will finally become a reality because they will be able to network with each other over low latency 5G, say the prophets. It will certainly help, but the real problem with self-driving is that AI just isn鈥檛 smart enough yet. We鈥檒l be able to download 4K movies in seconds. Fine, but so what, you can鈥檛 watch a 4K movie in seconds. Remote surgery will be possible. Maybe, but it鈥檚 hardly going to be a mass market, and 5G doesn鈥檛 speed up the long-distance internet backbone anyway.

All these things may or may not come true, but what鈥檚 really exciting about 5G latency are the applications we haven鈥檛 thought of yet. The kind of use cases that surprise Google. One thing you can be sure of is that people will find wonderful, and horrible, ways to exploit 5G鈥檚 capabilities.

Fundamentally, 5G will dramatically increase the flow of data and, therefore, the potential value that can be derived from that data. In this environment, the need to be flexible, agile, and open to new ideas will be more critical to business success than ever.

This blog is part 1 of a series of five written by 乌鸦传媒 Europe Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Gunnar Menzel.
Read part 2 of this series 鈥� Five new ways to think about 5G: In space, no one can hear your latency.