We streamed, we Zoomed, ordered fruits, vegetables, indoor plants while trying to address our technological shortcomings to work from home. In many ways, the isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic changed our technology needs, which became almost entirely digital.
Below you will see the winners and the losers of the year in technology.
Losers of the year
Virtual reality
As the world adapted to a new reality of staying at home, the pandemic could have been the opportunity for virtual reality to offer an escape. Using special headsets and equipment, this technology allows people to interact with a 360-degree projection of a three-dimensional environment – naturally, all of this is seemingly a good application for individuals who are constantly at home.
However, people turned to easier-to-use software and games they already owned. Thus, virtual reality lost its chance again to conquer the market.
Quibi
Quibi, abbreviation of «quick bites», raised $1.75 billion from investors, including major Hollywood players Disney, NBCUniversal and Viacom.
But the service failed to reach viewers, as there were too many short videos circulating online . The company announced it was shutting down in October, a few months after its April launch
Uber and Lyft
In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people, or about 14% of its workforce. Lyft also announced job. But there are some signs of hope. After significantly cutting costs through restructuring in the second quarter, Lyft said last month that it expects to have its first profitable quarter by the end of 2021.
Winners of the year
Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo Switch was launched in 2017. According to the NPD group, during the first 11 months of 2020, the Nintendo Switch sold 6.92 million units in the US. It was the console with the highest unit sales for 24 consecutive months.
Zoom
All video conferencing software from Microsoft Teams to WebEx flourished during the sudden shift of tens of millions of people to remote work and remote learning during the pandemic.
Zoom's ease of use has allowed for widespread adoption during the pandemic. There have been some issues with its lax security that led to a few security breaches, but since the company revamped its security, it remains one of the popular platforms for hosting remote meetings and classes.
Ransomware
The ransomware scourge reached epic proportions in 2020. In Germany, a patient was taken from the intensive care unit of a hospital whose IT system was paralyzed by a ransomware attack and died on the way to another hospital.
In the US, the number of attacks on healthcare facilities has nearly doubled since 2019. Attacks on government agencies increased by about 50 percent from the previous year.
Cybersecurity company Emsisoft estimates that the cost of ransomware attacks in the US alone for this year reached $11.8 billion.
Computer manufacturers
Naturally, this sector does not surprise us. Since everything became online, the demand for computers skyrocketed.
The July-September period was particularly strong, with PC shipments in the US increasing by 11% from the same period in 2019 – the industry's largest quarterly sales increase in a decade, according to research firm Gartner.
E-commerce
Amazon is one of the few companies that has thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers turned to online shopping, helping the company post record revenue and profit in April and June. This came despite spending $4 billion on supplies and paying workers overtime and bonuses .
But it's not just Amazon. The pandemic has accelerated the shift to online shopping, a trend that experts expect to persist after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
And thanks to shoppers consciously supporting small businesses, Adobe Analytics reports that online sales at smaller retailers in the US increased by 349% on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
Source: smh.com.au
