DIGITAL products and apps will become increasingly central to our lives at work and home, a digital leader has predicted.

Vicki Hughes, managing director at Fugu PR (pictured right) which helps organise the Brighton Digital Festival, suggested 2015 could be the year ‘wearable tech’ such as the Apple Watch takes off.

She said: “The more we live in a digital world, the more data we create and there are huge opportunities out there for businesses and start-ups that can find new and effective ways to utilise this data to improve the end user experience.”

The pace of growth of the city’s digital cluster will continue its “rapid advancement” in 2015.

She added: “The appliances and devices we use in our lives are already talking to each other with or without us knowing, and there is a massive potential out there for ideas and applications that will both enhance and simplify our lives.”

Another influential digital entrepreneur said the ‘sharing economy’ would disrupt traditional labour markets in 2015.

Darren Fell, managing director and founder at Crunch Accounting, said: "We're seeing an explosion in opportunities for the self-employed driven by mobile platforms at the moment – services like Uber or Handy, which give people access to a huge pool of punters, and let them make money on their own terms.”

Sam Silverwood-Cope, director at Intelligent Positioning, added: "2014 was a relatively frantic year in business that seemed to mimic the Brighton property market – where it seemed to be extremely competitive and moving at high velocity for the whole year.

“Last year our Brighton based business doubled in revenue and enlarged by 50% in terms of personnel. We hope that 2015 will be the same.

"With the election coming up, below average economic news coming out of Europe in terms of deflation and the possible Greek exit, times could be more circumspect than 2014.

“But in the market we are in, digital technology and marketing software, we hope there will be a need for our products however the economy is looking – when times are good or bad companies still need a competitive advantage that our software gives.”