Rise of the Quantum World

During the last hundred years, the humanity technological progress had started to increase at an unprecedented rate. First, the man had tamed the sky with aeroplanes, then, 50 years later — the space and the...

During the last hundred years, the humanity technological progress had started to increase at an unprecedented rate. First, the man had tamed the sky with aeroplanes, then, 50 years later — the space and the moon, descended to the deepest abyss of the ocean. At the same time, many researches had been conducted on quite the opposite, microscopic scale — to understand the most smaller parts and processes, underlying our very existence.

The so-called Quantum Revolution took place when the man had made the smallest piece of material which is atom and directed into the weapon production. Like many times before in history, the discovery which was supposed to benefit the human existence had become the harbinger of death for millions.

The global scale

The modern technology, however, still aims to work for the wellbeing of humanity. For example — quantum computers. At the beginning of the 21 century, the quantum computing technologies market was at its infancy — the very early stages of existence, but nowadays the reality is different.

Due to latest researches, the global quantum cryptography market size is expected to grow from $285.7 Million back in 2017 $USD 943.7 Million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27.0%. The major forces driving the growth of the quantum cryptography market include growing incidents of cyber-attacks and increasing data security and privacy concerns.

Still, we need to go back to roots to acquire the understanding of the modern quantum computing technologies.

What is Quantum Ready state

IBM is describing the current state of the technology designs, developments and implementation as Quantum Ready — when the humans had created the whole foundation for a further quantum technology development leap and are almost ready for the quantum technologies widespread implementation.

Basically, a bit can have one of two states: 0 or 1. A bit can be represented by a transistor switch set to «off» or «no» or abstractly by an arrow pointing up or down.

A qubit, the quantum version of a bit, has much more possible states. In turn, the states can be represented by an arrow pointing to a location on a sphere. The north pole is equivalent to 1, the south pole — to 0. The other locations are quantum superpositions of 0 and 1.

A qubit might seem to contain an infinite amount of information because its coordinates can encode an infinite sequence of digits. But the information in a qubit must be extracted by a measurement. When the qubit is measured, quantum mechanics requires that the final results are always equal to an ordinary bit — either 0 or 1. The probability of each outcome depends on a qubit «latitude.»

The IT and telecom are expected to hold the most significant market share in the quantum cryptography market during the forecast period. Moreover, the IT and telecom vertical is continuously developing and is at the epicentre of innovation and growth. The telecom business function generates voluminous data on a daily basis, which mandates the critical need for reliable quantum cryptography solutions. The telecom operators are adopting quantum cryptography solutions and providing secured information to the customers while complying with regulations, such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Furthermore, the rise in the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into multiple verticals including IT and telecom, along with increasing cyber-attacks, has doubled the need for security and safety. The business is expected to come with an emerging need for managing more complex networks of digital identities along with the technologies required for federation across emerging as well as developed economies.

North America is expected to hold the most significant market share and dominate the quantum cryptography market during the foreseeable future. The region has always been a hub for high investments in research and development (R&D) activities, thereby contributing to the development of new technologies. The growing concerns for the security of IT infrastructure and complex data in North America have mandated the enterprises in this region to adopt quantum cryptography and reliable authentication solutions. The rise in cyber-attacks, adoption of connected devices, adoption of BYOD, and cloud-based applications into enterprise system have resulted in tremendous growth of technology adoption in this region. This has also triggered a rise in next-generation threats and added more complexities and concerns in the IT infrastructure. North America suffers the highest frequency of cyber-attacks and stringent compliance regulations in the world. Hence, causing more threats, intrusions, and security breaches, and as a result, it has the most significant number of security vendors.

The major vendors in the quantum cryptography market include ID Quantique (Switzerland), MagiQ Technologies (US), Nucrypt (US), Infineon Technologies (Germany), Qutools (Germany), QuintenssenceLabs (Australia), Crypta Labs (UK), PQ Solutions (UK), and Qubitekk (US).