 "Top trends in the technology space in 2016")
The year 2016 has been a packed year when it comes to technology, with some of the biggest trends emerging out of India. From a $20 billion investment on setting up a 4G network to Aadhaar now becoming part of the “billion club” that only companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have been members of.
Here are the top 10 technology trends for the year gone by:
A Billion Aadhaar
In April this year the number of people registered by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) crossed one billion, marking a significant milestone for the country’s digital identity programme.
The Aadhaar programme became the first government-funded programme in the world to ever have over a billion users. The only comparisons one can draw are to global technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft which have over a billion users for their products.
The service is today powering schemes such as the Direct Benefit Transfer and going forward, will be used to power the India Stack, a group of digital services that will enable payments, authentication, storage of important documents, enable easier disbursal of loans and even make it easier for the common man to invest in capital markets.
Year of Make in India for phones
While Make in India has been one of the most popular agendas of the Modi government, the scheme really came into its own in 2016. India saw 35 new smartphone factories being setup with capacity for local production jumping fivefold over the previous year.
The growth in manufacturing phones in India has given employment to an additional 37,000 people, with the aim of growing the sectors employment to 50 lakh people by 2020 when production hits 500 million devices.
While today the smartphone manufacturing sector in India largely just assembles phones, in the upcoming years there are plans to being component manufacturing here as well which. This will not only require additional skills as a country but also better infrastructure, but will be worthwhile considering the bulk of smartphone demand in the future will be driven by Indian consumers.
Google becomes a hardware maker
So far Google has been known for making some of the slickest software in the world, with over seven of its products having over a billion users. While the company has dabbled with the idea of making its own hardware for a few years now, nothing really said “Google has arrived” in hardware as much as its Pixel phones.
Launched in October this year, the Pixel smartphones from Google is what the company imagines the best hardware to run its Android software and apps is. While the Nexus devices were sort of that, Google now has full control over its own premium hardware.
The Pixel phones are directly pitted against the Apple iPhone, with many calling it the iPhones biggest competitor in the years to come. In India, analysts estimate that the Pixel has captured 10 per cent of the premium smartphone market (Rs 35,000 and above) in the country.
Reusable rockets
Elon Musk’s space venture SpaceX, achieved one of its greatest feats in the quest for affordable space travel in 2016 -- it landed a rocket used to propel a satellite into space back to earth safely. With it the era of reusable space vehicles was back, after NASA decommissioned the space shuttle.
By reusing its Falcon 9 rocket (and other future rockets) SpaceX hopes to lower the cost of launching satellites or other items into space by as much as 30 per cent. This along with the already dwindling cost of launching items into space could really make “affordable” space travel a reality.
Luxembourg-based satellite manufacturer SES has already signed a contract with SpaceX to launch using one of the company’s reused Falcon 9 rockets. At this stage everything is still an experiment, but with Musk’s push for commercialising test flights, the speed of development is extremely fast.
Reliance Jio
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has been heralded as one of the most revolutionary changes in India’s telecom sector, which will have a larger impact of putting the Digital India dream on the map. According to statistics, Jio users are consuming 40-50 times more data than the average 3G smartphone user, with the service adding 10 million new users every month.
While growth is expected to level off in the months to come when the promotions run out, the fact that a large number of first-time users or low end users would have experienced the boon of high-speed net connectivity is enough to push them to pay more for 4G connectivity in the future, or at least that’s the idea.
None of this came cheap though. Mukesh Ambani calls Jio the world’s biggest startup that spent between $17-20 billion on infrastructure and other things before even getting its first customer. With a base plan that’s equal to the average monthly Indian spend on mobile talktime and recharge (Rs 150) and higher plans of Rs 499 and Rs 999, it is to be seen how quickly Jio makes back its investment.
Year of self-driving
Every major car manufacturer and even technology companies such as Google, Apple and Uber are now very much in the race to build self-driving cars. The year 2016 was a milestone for self-driving cars not only because a lot of them finally got permission to begin testing on public roads, but also because the stance of some players such as Google and Uber became clear that they would sell self-driving as a service rather than build cars.
While self-driving cars might have grabbed most of the headlines, it’s clear that the first form of autonomous vehicles on roads will be trucks. Otto, a subsidiary of Uber that builds self-driving trucks, made a 120 mile (193 km) run carrying 50,000 beers for Budweiser almost completely autonomously.
Self-driving cars are still a way away, but more of the features are slowly trickling into cars, albeit high end ones, already. Tesla’s cars can now drive themselves on the highway, and while the company faced a setback when investigators began looking for malfunctions in its system that could have caused a fatal crash, just this month a video of a Model S swerving to avoid a collision before the crash had even occurred ahead of the vehicle began doing the rounds.
Uber out of China
On August 1, Uber traded its China business for a 20 per cent stake in rival Didi Chuxing, thus bringing an end to the pipe dream that western firms could successfully do business in China. Muscled out of China with rules favouring local competitors, Travis Kalanick fully turned his attention to winning India.
While India was always a large blip on Uber’s radar, thanks to its underdeveloped and shoddy public transport systems and high-fare cabs. With big investments freeing up from China ($200 million a month) a big chunk of that has been diverted to winning in India, apart from an already substantial portion of a $3.5 billion fund raise being allotted to Uber India.
Uber’s heavy handed tactics of buying itself into the first place has been objected by current Indian market leader Ola. The Indian firm has accused Uber of “capital dumping” - a term it explained as foreign companies using capital raised or earned abroad to create an uneven playing field in India. Ola, one of the most well-funded companies in Indian used its capital muscle to squeeze all its local rivals, and even bought and shut down its closest rival TaxiForSure.
Drone deliveries
Drones became a staple of technology terminology in 2015, with everyone from cinematographers to the average joe buying into the “drone culture”. The year 2016 was when some serious applications for drones in the civilian space began to emerge.
Among the coolest uses for drones came from e-commerce giants such as Amazon that began testing drones for delivering items to a customer's doorstep. The company made its first commercial drone delivery in the UK, when it delivered popcorn and a Fire TV streaming device to a customer outside Oxford.
In India, Amazon’s biggest competitor Flipkart too is dabbling with the idea of delivering products to customers using drones. The company told Business Standard it was working with a few universities that were developing drone technology to really explore their use in e-commerce logistics.
Google WiFi at Indian train stations
Google began rolling out its free Wi-Fi at Indian train stations in January, and by December had achieved a goal of connecting 100 stations. Going forward, the company plans to connect a total of 400 stations and reach 10 million people a day with its free Wi-Fi.
For 2017, it is expected that Google will stick to the same pace, growing its base by a further 100 stations through the year. For the project that’s trying to promote people who’ve never used the Internet to buy into a data pack, that should be a commendable goal.
ISRO goes private
India’s space agency is looking more deeply at partnering with the private sector as it looks to speed up growth to tap into the massive growth seen in the global space market. While already tapping into private companies to build components for satellites and rockets, it has decided to grow that in the coming years.
Not only did ISRO sign over the complete development of two satellites to a private consortium, it also has begun working on plans to setup a separate entity along with private players to build and launch its PSLV rockets for other private players and countries.
ISRO is looking at a timeline of 2020 to setup the consortium of private partners, but has begun working on the framework for rules of engagement. The idea is to retain all strategic and social function launches thorough ISRO while commercial launches could be diverted to the private consortium giving the space agency more bandwidth to work on cutting edge research.
Here are the top 10 technology trends for the year gone by:
A Billion Aadhaar
Also Read
The Aadhaar programme became the first government-funded programme in the world to ever have over a billion users. The only comparisons one can draw are to global technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft which have over a billion users for their products.
The service is today powering schemes such as the Direct Benefit Transfer and going forward, will be used to power the India Stack, a group of digital services that will enable payments, authentication, storage of important documents, enable easier disbursal of loans and even make it easier for the common man to invest in capital markets.
Year of Make in India for phones
While Make in India has been one of the most popular agendas of the Modi government, the scheme really came into its own in 2016. India saw 35 new smartphone factories being setup with capacity for local production jumping fivefold over the previous year.
The growth in manufacturing phones in India has given employment to an additional 37,000 people, with the aim of growing the sectors employment to 50 lakh people by 2020 when production hits 500 million devices.
While today the smartphone manufacturing sector in India largely just assembles phones, in the upcoming years there are plans to being component manufacturing here as well which. This will not only require additional skills as a country but also better infrastructure, but will be worthwhile considering the bulk of smartphone demand in the future will be driven by Indian consumers.
Google becomes a hardware maker
So far Google has been known for making some of the slickest software in the world, with over seven of its products having over a billion users. While the company has dabbled with the idea of making its own hardware for a few years now, nothing really said “Google has arrived” in hardware as much as its Pixel phones.
Launched in October this year, the Pixel smartphones from Google is what the company imagines the best hardware to run its Android software and apps is. While the Nexus devices were sort of that, Google now has full control over its own premium hardware.
The Pixel phones are directly pitted against the Apple iPhone, with many calling it the iPhones biggest competitor in the years to come. In India, analysts estimate that the Pixel has captured 10 per cent of the premium smartphone market (Rs 35,000 and above) in the country.
Reusable rockets
Elon Musk’s space venture SpaceX, achieved one of its greatest feats in the quest for affordable space travel in 2016 -- it landed a rocket used to propel a satellite into space back to earth safely. With it the era of reusable space vehicles was back, after NASA decommissioned the space shuttle.
By reusing its Falcon 9 rocket (and other future rockets) SpaceX hopes to lower the cost of launching satellites or other items into space by as much as 30 per cent. This along with the already dwindling cost of launching items into space could really make “affordable” space travel a reality.
Luxembourg-based satellite manufacturer SES has already signed a contract with SpaceX to launch using one of the company’s reused Falcon 9 rockets. At this stage everything is still an experiment, but with Musk’s push for commercialising test flights, the speed of development is extremely fast.
Reliance Jio
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has been heralded as one of the most revolutionary changes in India’s telecom sector, which will have a larger impact of putting the Digital India dream on the map. According to statistics, Jio users are consuming 40-50 times more data than the average 3G smartphone user, with the service adding 10 million new users every month.
While growth is expected to level off in the months to come when the promotions run out, the fact that a large number of first-time users or low end users would have experienced the boon of high-speed net connectivity is enough to push them to pay more for 4G connectivity in the future, or at least that’s the idea.
None of this came cheap though. Mukesh Ambani calls Jio the world’s biggest startup that spent between $17-20 billion on infrastructure and other things before even getting its first customer. With a base plan that’s equal to the average monthly Indian spend on mobile talktime and recharge (Rs 150) and higher plans of Rs 499 and Rs 999, it is to be seen how quickly Jio makes back its investment.
Year of self-driving
Every major car manufacturer and even technology companies such as Google, Apple and Uber are now very much in the race to build self-driving cars. The year 2016 was a milestone for self-driving cars not only because a lot of them finally got permission to begin testing on public roads, but also because the stance of some players such as Google and Uber became clear that they would sell self-driving as a service rather than build cars.
While self-driving cars might have grabbed most of the headlines, it’s clear that the first form of autonomous vehicles on roads will be trucks. Otto, a subsidiary of Uber that builds self-driving trucks, made a 120 mile (193 km) run carrying 50,000 beers for Budweiser almost completely autonomously.
Self-driving cars are still a way away, but more of the features are slowly trickling into cars, albeit high end ones, already. Tesla’s cars can now drive themselves on the highway, and while the company faced a setback when investigators began looking for malfunctions in its system that could have caused a fatal crash, just this month a video of a Model S swerving to avoid a collision before the crash had even occurred ahead of the vehicle began doing the rounds.
Uber out of China
On August 1, Uber traded its China business for a 20 per cent stake in rival Didi Chuxing, thus bringing an end to the pipe dream that western firms could successfully do business in China. Muscled out of China with rules favouring local competitors, Travis Kalanick fully turned his attention to winning India.
While India was always a large blip on Uber’s radar, thanks to its underdeveloped and shoddy public transport systems and high-fare cabs. With big investments freeing up from China ($200 million a month) a big chunk of that has been diverted to winning in India, apart from an already substantial portion of a $3.5 billion fund raise being allotted to Uber India.
Uber’s heavy handed tactics of buying itself into the first place has been objected by current Indian market leader Ola. The Indian firm has accused Uber of “capital dumping” - a term it explained as foreign companies using capital raised or earned abroad to create an uneven playing field in India. Ola, one of the most well-funded companies in Indian used its capital muscle to squeeze all its local rivals, and even bought and shut down its closest rival TaxiForSure.
Drone deliveries
Drones became a staple of technology terminology in 2015, with everyone from cinematographers to the average joe buying into the “drone culture”. The year 2016 was when some serious applications for drones in the civilian space began to emerge.
Among the coolest uses for drones came from e-commerce giants such as Amazon that began testing drones for delivering items to a customer's doorstep. The company made its first commercial drone delivery in the UK, when it delivered popcorn and a Fire TV streaming device to a customer outside Oxford.
In India, Amazon’s biggest competitor Flipkart too is dabbling with the idea of delivering products to customers using drones. The company told Business Standard it was working with a few universities that were developing drone technology to really explore their use in e-commerce logistics.
Google WiFi at Indian train stations
Google began rolling out its free Wi-Fi at Indian train stations in January, and by December had achieved a goal of connecting 100 stations. Going forward, the company plans to connect a total of 400 stations and reach 10 million people a day with its free Wi-Fi.
For 2017, it is expected that Google will stick to the same pace, growing its base by a further 100 stations through the year. For the project that’s trying to promote people who’ve never used the Internet to buy into a data pack, that should be a commendable goal.
ISRO goes private
India’s space agency is looking more deeply at partnering with the private sector as it looks to speed up growth to tap into the massive growth seen in the global space market. While already tapping into private companies to build components for satellites and rockets, it has decided to grow that in the coming years.
Not only did ISRO sign over the complete development of two satellites to a private consortium, it also has begun working on plans to setup a separate entity along with private players to build and launch its PSLV rockets for other private players and countries.
ISRO is looking at a timeline of 2020 to setup the consortium of private partners, but has begun working on the framework for rules of engagement. The idea is to retain all strategic and social function launches thorough ISRO while commercial launches could be diverted to the private consortium giving the space agency more bandwidth to work on cutting edge research.