The A to Z of Tech 2020

A year of momentous upheaval where the Covid crisis took everyone by storm, the lockdown led to great technology innovations and Big Tech continued to flourish amid the recession.

A for App Bans: The Covid crisis led to a certain amount of disillusionment with China and the border dispute with India followed. The Indian government started with a succession of Chinese app bans. The US government, having security and trade issues of their own, followed suit. While the app battle between the US and China was that of equals, it remains to be seen if all this gives a fillip to the Indian app industry.

B for Bitcoin’s low & high: When Bitcoin was introduced in 2008, many established players called it a fraud, but it was embraced by a handful of enthusiasts and geeks and it survives well into the 2020s. While the 2010s do its many highs and lows, 2020 was also a roller coaster. In March it fell below $5000 but towards the end of the year it was in the region of 20K.

C for Contact Tracing: The good and the bad of tech together. It’s pretty great that during Covid, governments can monitor live its citizens and keep track of all its citizens and in the process manage the global epidemic that has brought countries to a halt. A fine example of e-governance implemented quickly. But what about monitoring citizens and knowing where all of them are when there is no epidemic?

D for Driverless everything: California gave permission to Google-owned Waymo to conduct driverless car rides, called robotaxis, and thousands have already used it in the trial runs. Drones were used to spray disinfectants in the streets in many Indian cities and were also used to monitor social distancing during lockdowns. The technology for drones-driverless cars was present for many years, but now the Covid No Touch Era gave governments the incentives to go ahead with legislation to allow it.

E for Educational transformation: Students of all ages and geographies across schools and colleges got a taste of online education. Some of it was good. Some of it was bad. Some of it is temporary and some of it will become permanent. This will give a boost to low cost education and those who live in remote areas. The ease of introducing new courses and updating syllabi is a boon. The US education industry is already groaning under a $1.5 trillion student debt (not even the GDP of most countries).

F for Foxconn: Foxconn is shifting manufacturing of certain units of iPhone 11 to India. This is a big boost to Make in India and this year we emerged as the No. 2 mobile manufacturing country in the world. Foxconn is planning to shift out certain Macbook and iPad operations to Vietnam. The world is getting ready to reduce its dependence on Supply Chain China and it will be no different in tech.

G for Generations of Telephony: Did you know that millions of people still use 2G in India. The rest of the users are distributed between 3G and 4G. While technological acceleration covered most fields, not so much 5G in India. Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced at the last Annual General Meeting that they can implement 5G within a year of getting the contract. But with the way it's going, India may give 5G a miss in 2021 too.

H for Hacks all kinds: Hackers wait for special occasions, celebrity milestones and crises to strike and this time it was no different. Everyone right from the World Health Organization was attacked and ransomware cases increased. The most high-profile was the Twitter hack where 130 top global verified accounts were taken over. Later the Twitter account of the website of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also hacked.

I for IPO of Ant Group: Global investors put in bids worth a whopping for $3 trillion for Alibaba’s Fintech Ant Group. What was proving to be the largest IPO in history and a great global debut was pulled at the last minute by Chinese regulator leaving Chinese billionaire Jack Ma high and dry. Had everything gone as scheduled, Ant would have debuted as a $300 billion plus company.

J for Jio: Jio’s dream run continued in 2020. It consolidated its market share, positioned itself as a future 5G player, but more importantly got a host of investments crossing one lakh crore Rupees: Facebook, Google, Qualcomm, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, PIF, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority etc. Jio established itself as a global tech player.

K for Ka and Ku bands: Elon Musk’s SpaceX is launching revolutionary Starlink satellite internet service for the world. The beta trials started this year as the number of total satellites up there was in the region of one thousand this year. Once this project is completed, then no place in the world will be Internetless. It will use both the Ka and Ku bands.

L for Ledger: While Bitcoin gets too much mind share in the global public, cryptocurrency not so much. But even less is the concept of Distributed Ledger on which all this is based, Blockchain. This is quite handy for the banking industry and indeed many have finally warmed up to it. It was also discussed extensively to boost up the supply chain, something that came into sharp focus during the Covid crisis.

M for mRNA: While many viruses have been around for thousands of years and some vaccines took hundreds of years to develop. That way Covid ushered in the tech era for vaccines. The messenger RNA vaccine was created on the computer and replicated easily on the machine. In 2020 itself the vaccine went from drawing board to being distribution ready. If it succeeds it will revolutionize medicine.

N for Net Neutrality: When US President Barack Obama took over in 2009 he introduced his own set of Internet rules. When his predecessor Donald Trump took over, he scrapped the Obama era rules and returned to status quo. Now that Trump is on his way out, Silicon Valley is looking to what new rules will come with the new regime in 2021. Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, also resigned with regard to this.

O for OTT: With movie halls shut down for most of the year, people turned to OTT in large numbers and choked the bandwidths. While Netflix and Amazon Prime continued to charm, Disney+ came to India in association with Hotstar. India also has many regional players. The film industry will probably never return to its glory days.

P for PUBG: This became a sensation among the youth of India, so much so that many elders demanded its ban due to its “violence” and “bad influence”. However the ban finally came after the China border dispute. PUBG is of Korean origin but released by the Chinese Tencent, so the former is desperately trying to make a return under a new tie-up.

Q for Quantum computing: If last year Google claimed to have achieved Quantum supremacy, this year it was the turn of China. They claim to have built a photonic quantum computer that could perform certain computations 100 trillion times faster than the best supercomputer, which is 10 billion times faster than the Google prototype of 2019. The Chinese government is sponsoring a $10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences.

R for Retail: This saw sea change this year. While traditional retail survived and boosted its ecommerce footprint, traditional ecommerce players flourished. In the US it doubled and India gained a lot of new users too. The delivery boy network expanded and did a great service to the nation during the Covid lockdown.

S for Services: While there wasn’t much focus on this, Indian IT services also chugged along and TCS became the largest IT services company in the world going past Accenture. They have been the backbone of Indian IT, but the focus is slowly shifting to things like startups.

T for TikTok: The teen sensation across the world was heading to the one billion users club and in all likelihood would have gone past WhatsApp and Instagram and been No. 2 (after Facebook). It was popular in both America and India. It was a hit in both urban and rural India. Then both countries went after TiKTok and now it is in decline.

U for US Congress: The US Congress summoned Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai over antitrust issues. While nothing came of it (yet), the Big Tech and Big Govt fight continues. The new European Union rules in 2021 will really bring things to a head.

V for Virtual Reality: This is one of the emerging technologies that showed its worth in the No Touch Era. It has applications in the medical field, education, entertainment, tourism, gaming etc.

W for WFH: 2020 is the year the Work From Home era really began. Before this it was an exception in most cases but now it became the rule. Almost the whole world did WFH and many had this status sanctioned for good. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and now the mind set has changed. More importantly the bandwidth has gone up and now we have enough collaboration tools to deliver the goods.

X for Xiaomi: Despite the call for boycott of Chinese products, Xiaomi continued to do well in India in the form of mobiles, wearables and smart TVs. Globally in mobile shipments it went past Apple to claim the No. 3 spot.

Y for Yelp: Came under great controversy this year when it said it would flag businesses that were considered racist. But it showed how Silicon Valley and tech companies continue to grapple with things like diversity and inclusion.

Z for Zoom: Zoom symbolized the Zeitgeist of the year. Video conferencing and collaboration really took off and it registered a lot of first-time users. After that WFH and online education also got a boost. Zoom had come out with an IPO and became profitable in 2019, but 2020 has proved to be their best year ever. It will be interesting to see how 2021 pans out for the collaboration industry.