About to end this intense 2021, in MCPRO we wanted to review what have been the great technological issues. The component crisis It has had a strong impact on the technology industry, a veritable earthquake whose tremors have begun to affect other industries as well.
And although this has undoubtedly been the great theme of the year, it has not been far from the only one that has caught our attention. Among other topics of interest, a processor market that had never been so animated in part thanks to Apple, the development of a new “space race” starring not by countries like in the Cold War but by companies, or a Metaverse that de moment lives more on promises than on realities.
A crisis of components that will last … until 2023
If the year that is about to end has shown us something, it is to what extent we depend on the large Asian factories. It has been enough for some of these companies to have been aware of the COVID slow motion a few months, so that sectors such as technology, but also others such as the automobile, suffer the consequences.
Even if they are available, the huge bottleneck this year in the supply chain, with containers piling up in major ports around the world and the price of freight soaring, has caused a perfect storm of which it is not known when the world will be able to recover.
In the medium term, the solution is to build new microchip plants in the United States and Europe, where the European Commission has spent much of 2021 trying to convince Intel to invest.
The year of ARM … and especially Apple Silicon
It had been a long time that following the news produced by the semiconductor market was not so interesting. Especially because of the rush into this sector by Apple, which although it is true that it presented its new architecture at the end of 2020, it was this year when it has really consolidated against Intel, AMD and other manufacturers.
Starting with its original M1, but especially in the M1 Pro Y M1 Max, those of Cupertino are openly proposing that the future of computing passes through ARM. And while the x86 architecture hasn’t said the last word (that’s Intel’s latest developments to prove it), the placid dominance that Pat Gelsinger’s have maintained for the past decade is certainly over.
The airlines … from space
If ten years ago they had told us that traveling into space would be as simple as buying a ticket on the Internet, we would not have believed it. And yet in 2021 the seeds have been planted for this to be so.
We have not only had the opportunity to “meet” the first space tourists, but also the commercial career that companies such as Spacex (Elon Musk), Blue origin (Jeff Bezos) and Virgin (Richard Branson) is already shaping the future of space exploration.
These three companies are not only already leading the launch of satellites (both for their own constellations and for third parties), but they are also the ones that present the most ambitious plans to lead human beings to discover “new territories”.
NFT and the new life of the Blockchain
If we leave aside the world of cryptocurrencies, of all the commercial possibilities related to the blockchain, no other has aroused so much interest or grabbed as many headlines this year as NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens).
From the first Tweet in history, to an artistic creation, through virtual objects designed to be used in certain video games … practically any digital asset can become an NFT that we can buy, sell and claim its certificate of authenticity, no matter how much this be a somewhat ethereal concept in the online world.
And although the NFT is not for all audiences and probably most people will never invest money in getting one, it is true that they have given the blockchain a special “momentum” that marks the way forward for its development in all kinds of fields, including smart contracts with which to transfer ownership, or better supply chain management.
Metaverse
It doesn’t really exist yet and “metaverse” has become one of the words of the year. And not so much because of the novelty of an idea that already has a few decades behind it, but because of the “sudden” voracity of some technology companies that are preparing to terminate the web as we know it and then build (and fight to be controlled) this ralternative reality.
With Meta (Facebook) as the main company committed to building this alternative reality, the truth is that neither in 2021, nor probably in 2022, technology is ready to fulfill its promises. Not at least in the consumer market.
In the case of companies, on the other hand, the development of digital twins and the use of augmented reality devices continues to gain ground and large companies such as Boeing have begun to use this technology to improve their engineering processes.
There is a market for folding devices
Although it has not yet become a mass phenomenon, foldable phones have found a niche of their own this year. The third revision of the Samsung Fold and the second of its Flip have exceeded expectations despite their high price and unlike other ephemeral phenomena such as 3D televisions, it seems that this time the technology has come to stay.
In fact, taking as a starting point that this trend is consolidating, the consultancy Counterpoint estimates that shipments of folding telephones will multiply by 10 by 2023, with a possible price reduction being one of the clear key factors driving this growth.
The electric vehicle is already unstoppable
Predictions in early 2021 called for a 71% increase in EV purchases throughout the year. In October, there was an increase of 88%, which represents a growth of the electric vehicle market above expectations.
All of this growth means that EVs only account for 2.7% of the entire automotive market, so there is plenty of room for growth. With the infrastructure requirements and additional incentives coming from programs like the European Recovery Funds, it seems like there has never been a better time to say goodbye to the old petrol / diesel car and hello to new, clean vehicles.
