The Decade in Review: Technology

MOBILE

What's All This About Peak Smartphone?

The average person touches their phone over 2,600 times a day. It holds their contacts, logins, payment data, social life, secrets. But don't let its unassuming edge-to-edge touchscreen fool you: After a decade's hard work, the smartphone is ubiquitous in the modern economy.

Everyone's got an app these days

The explosion of smartphone ownership changed how consumers interact with businesses. Banking, hiring, retail, insurance, entertainment...nearly every industry is now catering their services to pocket-sized devices.

• Almost 40% of U.S. adults primarily use smartphones to access the internet.
• Nearly half of internet searches are completed on mobile.
• Mobile advertising accounts for over two-thirds of U.S. digital ad spend, per eMarketer.

The GSM Association, a consortium of mobile network operators, estimated that the mobile ecosystem contributed $1.1 trillion to the global economy last year. But the real impact of smartphones is much greater than helping pass the time on the subway.

Smartphones are extending economic opportunities to hundreds of millions of underserved people around the world. In developing countries, smartphone ownership is correlated with broader social networks, more participation in digital commerce, and greater access to information.

Will things slow down?

After a few years of staggering growth, smartphone shipments began declining in 2017, according to internet expert Mary Meeker. Last year, shipments were down 4% annually.

Mary Meeker, Internet Trends 2019 | Bars represent annual global smartphone shipments; red line represents year-over-year growth

What happened? Market saturation. Over the last decade, smartphone ownership among U.S. adults increased to 81% from 35%. Phones got bigger, smarter, and more powerful...but the rate of progress and product differentiation have slowed down.

2010 phones may feel like walkie-talkies today. But as hard as smartphone makers try to get creative with wireless charging, folding screens, and gesture controls, smartphones have largely stuck to the same basic design. So consumers aren't upgrading as quickly as they used to.

There might not be another 2007 iPhone moment. If anything, smartphones are being challenged by the constellation of smart, connected devices surrounding us at work and at home, like smart speakers, watches, and glasses. However, smartphones are likely to serve as the hub for the next wave of consumer tech: contactless payments, immersive virtual realities, and AI-curated everything.

BIG TECH

Just How Big Is Big Tech?

In Aug. 2018, Apple became the first company in history to reach a $1 trillion valuation. One month later, Amazon joined the club (though has since fallen back to the billions), and this April, so did Microsoft. But it's not just the number of 0's that has regulators and other businesses worried. These big tech companies have evolved from mostly singular missions (search engines, retail, phones) to businesses than span content creation, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, ad platforms, self-driving cars, and more.

The ease with which they take over new markets (and squash or suck up smaller players) has regulators worried. Over the last few years, calls for antitrust action and breaking up Big Tech have grown (though Microsoft, which already has one antitrust suit under its belt, has largely been spared this round).

PRIVACY

Are Privacy and Security Dead?

This decade, data breaches increased in size, cost, and destructiveness. They've exposed government secrets, leaked private celebrity photos, and crippled logistics networks.

The average data breach today costs businesses nearly $4 million. Two-thirds of the largest data breaches ever occurred this decade and billions of records were stolen, including...

• 3B from Yahoo (2014)
• 143M from Equifax (2017)
• 500M from Marriott (2018)

Despite countless security warnings, consumers still reuse Twitter passwords for their bank accounts. Many feel hopeless about securing their private information anyway.

• Data brokers collect and sell intimate details of our lives, from age and home address to our interest in watching A Christmas Prince.
• Internet companies with thousands of data points on us have been caught giving third parties access.

Regulators to the rescue?

GDPR, the biggest data protection regulation to date, went into effect in May 2018 in the EU. It cemented consumers' digital rights (like knowing how their personal data is being used) and empowered regulators to fine companies that fail to meet those standards.

GDPR inspired California to pass a similar bill, CCPA, which goes into effect in January 2020 and could spark similar measures around the U.S.

Bottom line: Regulators and users want more protection, but they're playing tug-of-war against 1) internet companies with vested interests in shady data dealings and 2) cyberattackers bent on exploiting personal information.

CONNECTIVITY

Internet Access Grew This Decade...But Many Are Still Without

The "digital divide"—or gulf between those with internet access and those without—has shrunk significantly over the past decade, but rural communities still remain less likely to have internet access than urban and suburban areas. State governments and the Federal Communications Commission are trying to close that gap by offering carriers incentives to build out rural networks. And ideas of internet access as a public utility and "broadband for all" have become key parts of several presidential candidates' platforms.

But the digital divide doesn't just fall across geographic lines. The Department of Housing and Urban Development said that over half of households making less than $30,000/year don’t have internet access at home.

IT

Forget Hot Social Apps—We're Here for Enterprise Tech Solutions

Consumer tech got a digital facelift this decade, but business tech went for the full body makeover. Companies elevated tech execs within their organizations; IT departments across industries moved from problem-solvers to innovation-drivers; and cloud computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence enabled rapid growth and scale.

Follow the money. Worldwide IT spending is expected to hit $3.7 trillion in 2019, up ~12% since 2010.

Cloudy forecasts ahead

In 2010, IT advisory company Gartner pegged worldwide cloud services revenue at $68.3 billion. This year, the global public cloud services market is set to surpass $214 billion, driven by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Alibaba—cloud behemoths whose rapid growth results from businesses moving data and workloads out of basement server rooms.

The cloud is a foundational medium for businesses to layer on innovations in data analytics, AI, and application development.

• Cloud tech allows for distributed computing (moving information processing out to connected devices), which is crucial for systems in autonomous vehicles and smart cities.
• It's created infrastructure and on-demand processing power capable of analyzing the thousands (sometimes millions) of data points businesses collect daily.

Don't forget how we work. Cloud computing has also enabled communication and collaboration tools like Slack, Teams, Zoom, and Hangouts that support increasingly geographically distributed workforces.

CRYPTO

Nothing Says 2010s Quite Like Bitcoin

Fun fact: Cryptocurrencies were one of the best-performing assets this decade.

That's mainly due to bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009, and for the first half of the 2010s it flitted between obscurity and heavy skepticism from consumers, the finance industry, and governments. Then all hell broke loose in 2017, when it shot up to nearly $20k and turned some early backers into millionaires. Now...some are comparing bitcoin to the financial bubbles of centuries past.

But over the latter half of the decade, something happened. Cryptos like Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and (yes) bitcoin gained more legitimacy. Wall Street started thawing, and this year Facebook corralled some of the biggest names in payments, banking, investment, and tech to back a cryptocurrency project, the Libra Association. While that's run into opposition, the association still marks a level of institutional backing that bitcoin couldn't have dreamt of in 2010.

INTERNATIONAL

China Doesn't Mess Around

China mostly missed the late 20th century technology boom, so it's spent the last decade catching up to (and sometimes leapfrogging) the West. Credit goes to heavy state investment in next-gen tech, second-mover advantage, and some forced technology transfer.

Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most competitive front, and China's boosting domestic research centers to cut into the U.S.' lead.

Helps when you have the world's largest internet-using population. As smartphone prices fell, millions of Chinese joined the digital economy.

China skipped credit cards and went straight to cashless mobile and facial recognition-based payments. Superapps and services like Tencent's WeChat and Alibaba's Alipay built massive tech platforms for consumers and businesses.

• Remember those names. Alibaba, Tencent, and search giant Baidu have dominated China's tech scene. They're frequently viewed as parallel universe versions of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
• Newer apps like DiDi Chuxing (ridesharing) and ByteDance's Toutiao (AI-curated news) and TikTok (social) have also joined the big leagues.

However, the Communist party apparatus makes it hard to get a clear picture of China's tech scene. According to different reports, the country either has more unicorns than the U.S...or half as many.

The dark side: As Beijing's groomed its tech sector, it's also installed a far-reaching surveillance network that's facilitated human rights abuses.

INNOVATION

A Decade of Tech Fails and Flops

This decade, we were introduced to algorithmically curated dating apps, folding phones, Instagram, and self-driving cars. But behind every product that made the cut is a ghost army of just-missed-it's and not-even-close's. Here are our favorites.

Social: Shoutout to Google for trying not once, but twice to launch a social networking tool. Google Buzz, released in 2010, was shut down less than two years later. Next came Google+, which lasted nearly nine years before Google finally got the message.

Entertainment: In 2011, Netflix announced it was separating its DVD service from its streaming service and calling it "Qwikster." A few weeks later, the company reversed course after 800,000 angry customers quit the platform. And don't forget about Moviepass (2011-2019). RIP.

Devices: Amazon's 2014 Fire Phone, Google Glass, Wii U, BlackBerry’s tablet foray PlayBook, Apple's never-realized wireless charging mat...and, most spectacularly, the 2016 Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which flopped (and exploded) so hard it was banned from airplanes.

Facebook: You might still be wincing at this year's introduction of Facebook Dating, but don't forget that the social network also tried to roll out an email service (Project Titan) and mobile experience (Facebook Home).

COMEDY

Networking in 2029

I place my palm on the doorpad. "Welcome Henry," it says.

I grab a coffee (two sugars, quinoa milk—the AI knows me well). I scan the conversation booths: Brian Solomon, age 31, growth analyst, Intelligence Rating 81, Social Rating 78, Credit Score 732. He's in a corner booth headset plugged in, face like he's looking at my Profile headshot. I sit.

"Brian," I say.

"Henry," he says.

Networking has—somehow—gotten more boring ever since Profiles became available for Headset download. People don't ask questions anymore; everyone just recites each other's work history.

"You got promoted to the North America team back in '24," I say.

"Yes, and 17 people endorse you as being 'Good for enterprise,'" he replies.

We regurgitate each other's resumes some more, but I'm retinal streaming Joe Rogan, and judging by the way his left eye is twitching, I think he is, too. 10 years ago, if you'd told me that this is what networking would one day come to—me and Brian, both pretending we're not watching Joe Rogan kickbox a robot, the entirety of each other's personal history being projected on to our eyeballs—I would've said: At least it's not a LinkedIn automated response.