The presentation this week of Deloitte Canada’s tech outlook indicated there are some interesting opportunities for Atlantic Canadian startups, and showed where the region has to improve its ecosystem.

The findings of the 13th annual Canadian TMT Predictions (TMT stands for technology, media and telecommunications) have been well reported elsewhere, so I’d like to just delve into a couple of things that came out of the presentation in Halifax on Tuesday by Duncan Stewart, director of research at Deloitte Canada.

Stewart made stops in Saint John and Halifax this week to discuss the findings of the report, and fielded questions on what to expect in the tech market, especially the market for hardware, this year and for the rest of the decade.

What I took away from the event at the McInnes Cooper offices in Halifax was that Atlantic Canadian startups are positioned in a few markets that are going to be huge in a few years, but that more work needs to be done to develop salespeople to truly capitalize on these opportunities.

Deloitte said sales of tech devices will reach $750 billion around the world this year, having risen almost 12 per cent annually for 11 years. It’s the most astonishing growth record for products in human history.

But the report also said sales of devices — TVs, cellphones, tablets, PCs and the like — will level off in three or four years at about $800 billion and not move much from there.

“What we are seeing is the saturation of the hardware market,” said Stewart.

He added that as consumer spending continues to grow, people around the world will have money in their pockets to spend on other things, likely apps, software, content and services.

These are the sort of businesses that Atlantic Canada is developing like never before. It would be an exaggeration to say the region is a big player in apps and software, but it’s growing dramatically and developing the capacity to grow bigger.

Most of Stewart’s presentation delved deeper into the makeup of that $750-billion market and predicted where the next phase of growth will come.

He’s bullish on driverless cars, on smart glasses as an enterprise product, on the growth of “phablets” in Asia, excluding Japan.

One warning Stewart delivered for entrepreneurs is that the U.S. market, which was 47 per cent of the global hardware market in 2006, is now about 27 per cent.

“We have to start upping our game in the rest of the world, not because there’s anything wrong with the States, but because the rest of the world is so much bigger,” said Stewart.

Though Stewart was speaking about hardware, and Atlantic Canada tends to produce software, the markets are linked and there’s an opportunity for the region.

There is now a crying need to develop tech salespeople in Atlantic Canada. It’s difficult to find a tech company that doesn’t need to bolster its sales staff — not just in numbers, but also in experience.

There’s a lot of discussion on how to develop salespeople for the tech sector, and many believe there will have to be a new educational institution to teach tech sales.

If there is a realization that three-quarters of the global tech market lies outside the U.S., there’s an opportunity to develop curriculum and expertise for sales in Europe, Asia and developing markets.