Hindsight · review build · data not yet validated

Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

31 editions. Pick a year to see its curve, or follow one technology across every edition.

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

1996

complete20 entries

<2 years2-5 years5-10 years>10 yearsobsolete before plateau years low confidenceGrey: no band on the chart. Exact positions where digitized; otherwise spread evenly within the phase on a schematic curve.

Read from a copy of the chart titled 'Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 1996' on Pinterest (615x325 GIF, 'Uploaded by user', in a series of pins for 1996 to 2007 by the same account). No Gartner page for the 1996 edition was found, so the exact date is unknown. Fenn's history names Java, Internet terminals and the Worldwide Web at the 1996 peak, which matches the chart. rank is the order along the curve, left to right. The chart has no time-to-plateau markers, so every band is null.

Label	Phase	Confidence	Note
Cable Modems	innovation_trigger	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Digital Video Disk	innovation_trigger	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Smart Cards	innovation_trigger	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Intranets	innovation_trigger	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Label high on the rising side, just below Java.
Java	peak	high	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Fenn names Java at the 1996 peak.
Internet Terminals	peak	high	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Fenn names Internet terminals at the 1996 peak.
World Wide Web	peak	high	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Chart text reads 'World \|\|Wide Web' (rendering artefact). Fenn names the Worldwide Web at the 1996 peak.
Agents	peak	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Label on the descending side, high up.
Virtual Reality	trough	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Interactive TV	trough	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Personal Digital Assistants	trough	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Desktop Computer-Telephony Integration	trough	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Label under the bottom of the trough.
Handwriting Recognition	slope	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Label just past the bottom of the trough.
Desktop Videoconferencing	slope	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Speech Recognition	slope	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Database Mining	slope	medium	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries.
Massively Parallel Processing	slope	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Label above the curve where it flattens.
Object-oriented Programming	plateau	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Label under the curve where it flattens.
Workflow	plateau	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. Chart text reads 'Workflow Imaging'. The 1997 chart shows 'Workflow' and 'Imaging' as two separate labels, so they are recorded as two entries here; this split is not confirmed for 1996.
Imaging	plateau	low	Phase inferred from the label's position on the curve; the chart draws no phase boundaries. Near a phase boundary. See Workflow.