I streamed, enlarged, ordered food and houseplants online, created virtual villages while browsing in the absence of laptops to work and learn from home.
When it comes to technology, 2020 has been a year like no other – and as the world has had to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic, some technology companies have won big, while others have lost.
wandering
Virtual reality
As the world adapted to a new reality stuck at home, the pandemic could have been the chance for virtual reality to deliver an escape. With the help of headphones and special accessories, such as gloves, the technology allows people to interact with a 360-degree view of a three-dimensional environment, apparently suitable for people trapped inside.
But people turned to easier-to-use software and games they already had. Few rushed to spend hundreds of dollars on a strange new headset or tried to learn the ropes of virtual reality dating software. And no VR game has entered the mainstream. So, virtual reality, on the verge of decades of success, has lost its momentum again.
Electoral labels for social networks
It was the year of labels on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even TikTok. Ahead of the US presidential vote on November 3, companies pledged to reduce election misinformation, including unfounded allegations of fraud and premature victory declarations by candidates. And the most visible part of this was the grouping of tags applied to tweets, posts, photos and videos.
“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is contested and could be misleading in connection with the election or other civic process,” reads a typical tag applied to a tweet by President Donald Trump.
But many experts said that although the labels made it appear that companies were taking action, “at the end of the day, it turned out to be quite inefficient,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a professor at Syracuse University and a social media expert.
which
Less than a year ago, Quibi launched a brilliant Super Bowl commercial asking “What is a Quibi?” It is possible that people are still scratching their heads.
Quibi, short for “quick bites,” raised $ 1.75 billion from investors, including major players from Hollywood Disney, NBCUniversal and Viacom.
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg raised $ 1.75 billion from investors, but closed the company in October, just six months after its April launch. [File: Taylor Jewell/AP Photo]
But the service has struggled to reach viewers, as short videos abound on the internet and the coronavirus pandemic has kept many people at home. It has announced that it will close in October, just a few months after its launch in April.
Uber and Lyft
Just out of the initial public offerings of the previous year and still struggling to show that they can be profitable, travel services were covered by the pandemic in 2020, as people stopped taking cars and crowded home.
In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people, or about 14 percent of the workforce. Lyft also announced job cuts.
But there are some signs of hope. After significantly reducing restructuring costs in the second quarter, Lyft said last month that it expects to have a profitable first quarter at the end of 2021.
Starting with the initial public offerings of the previous year and still struggling to show that they can be profitable, travel services have been covered by the pandemic in 2020, as people have welcomed fewer trips [File: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo]
Companies also won a major victory in California, where voters adopted Proposition 22, granting others an exception to a law that sought to classify their drivers as employees, an expense that analysts believed would have hurt their business in the past. most populous state of the nation.
US TikTok ban
While India has outlawed the popular video-sharing app in the US, TikTok seems close to eliminating Donald Trump’s term without the president succeeding in banning him.
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked a possible ban. It was the administration’s latest legal defeat in its efforts to snatch the application from Chinese owners. In October, another federal judge postponed the November scheduled closure.
Many artists, such as choreographer Netta Yerushalmy, have turned to social media to share their work during the coronavirus pandemic, posting music and artwork on Instagram [File: Mary Altaffer/AP Photo]
In the meantime, a government deadline has passed for Father TikTok, ByteDance, to finalize an agreement that Oracle and Walmart should invest in TikTok, as the status of the agreement is unclear.
Although President-elect Joe Biden has said TikTok is a concern, it is unclear what will lead his administration to the Trump administration’s attempts to ban it.
Winners
Nintendo Switch
Even in a year announcing great new consoles on the Xbox and PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch was the console that could. Launched in 2017, Switch has become a fast seller. This was helped by the launch of the manipulated Switch Lite in September 2019.
In March, it became difficult to find a Switch, while people were looking for ways to have fun in their homes. Growing in popularity was the launch of the island simulation game “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”, which debuted on March 20 and now sells 26 million units globally, according to Nintendo.
According to the NPD group, in the first 11 months of 2020, Nintendo Switch sold 6.92 million units in the US. It was the best-selling console in units sold for 24 consecutive months – a record.
According to the NPD group, in the first 11 months of 2020, Nintendo Switch sold 6.92 million units in the US [File: Steven Senne/AP Photo]zoom
All video conferencing software – from Microsoft Teams to WebEx – thrived during the sudden shift of tens of millions of people to distance work and school during a pandemic. But only one became a verb.
Zoom Video Communications was a relatively unknown company before the pandemic hit, but its ease of use allowed for widespread adoption during the pandemic.
There has been some growing pain, including lax security that has led to violations of the “zoom bombing” in time. The company has modernized its security and remains one of the popular platforms for hosting meetings and distance learning courses.
Ransomware providers
The redemptive scourge – in which criminals hold hostage data by shuffling them until victims pay – reached epic proportions in 2020, correlating terribly with the COVID-19 plague. In Germany, a patient returned from the emergency room of a hospital whose computer system was paralyzed by an attack and died on the way to another hospital.
In the US, the number of attacks on healthcare facilities was close to doubling from 50 in 2019. Attacks on state and local governments have increased by about 50% to over 150. Even high schools have been affected – learning closure distance for students from Baltimore to Las Vegas.
Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft estimates the cost of US ransomware attacks in the US alone this year at over $ 9 billion between paid ransoms and downtime.
Computer manufacturers
After starting the year struggling with exasperating delays in their supply chains, the personal computer industry was quick to keep up with the growing demand for cars that became indispensable during a pandemic that kept millions of workers and students at home.
The outbreak initially hampered production because computer manufacturers failed to get the parts they needed from overseas factories that stopped in the early stages of the health crisis.
After experiencing exasperating delays in their supply chains in early 2020, the personal computer industry has rushed to keep up with the growing demand for machines as people work and learn from home. [File: Kathy Willens/AP Photo]
These closures contributed to a sharp decline in sales in the first three months of the year. But there have been boom times ever since.
The July-September period was particularly robust, with US computer deliveries up 11% from the same period in 2019 – the largest quarterly increase in industry sales in a decade, according to research firm Gartner.
Electronic commerce
The largest in the group, Amazon, is one of the few companies that thrived during the coronavirus outbreak. People turned to her to order food, supplies and other items online, helping the company bring in record revenue and profits between April and June. This came even though he had to spend $ 4 billion on cleaning materials and pay workers overtime and bonuses.
But it’s not just Amazon. The pandemic is accelerating the transition to online shopping, a trend that experts are waiting to say even after vaccines allow the world to resume normal life.
People turned to Amazon to order food, toiletries and other items online, helping the company record record revenue figures between April and June [File: Steven Senne/AP Photo]
And thanks in part to buyers who consciously support small businesses, Adobe Analytics says online sales from smaller U.S. retailers rose 349 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
Of the more than 1 million companies that use Shopify to build their websites, sales rose 75 percent from a year ago to $ 2.4 billion on Black Friday, according to Shopify.
The jury came out
Big Tech
Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google have done well financially, with the share price and profits of each company increasing considerably since the beginning of the year. They gained users, launched new products and features, and continued to hire, even though other companies and industries faced significant discounts.
But not everything is good in the Big Tech world. Regulators were breathing down the necks of every company and it is unlikely to ease in 2021. Google is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice. And Facebook has been hit by one from the Federal Trade Commission, along with almost every US state trying to separate it from WhatsApp and Instagram.
More cases could follow. Congressional investigators spent months digging into the actions of Apple and Amazon in addition to Facebook and Google and called on the CEO of all four companies to testify.