2020 was a very particular year, and 2021 promises to be no less. But in spite of all the uncertainty surrounding us, not everything was bad. Thanks to technology we've all stayed connected through the crisis and many advancements were made in the world of tech in 2020.
Looking ahead, we've put together a list of 4 fields we believe will be the leaders of innovation in the tech industry, as we all know, there's still a lot more room for innovation and breakthroughs.
1. Permanent adoption of remote working
Remote working saw, for obvious reasons, explosive growth during the pandemic. With companies and institutions adopting safety measures to protect their employees, working from home became the new norm.
Zoom was the star of the show, but other well-known companies like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and GoToMeeting had a huge spike in users as well.
Companies are now more open to the idea of allowing their employees to work either full-time or part-time from their homes. Not only because of safety, it also reduces fixed costs drastically.
Every piece of software out there facilitating virtual meetings, message exchanges, or remote collaboration is growing continuously. A while ago, our team chose its favorite apps to stay productive while working remotely.
2. E-learning as part of formal education
Online education became a necessity during the last year due to the pandemic. With all schools and universities closed in 190 countries for safety reasons, professors and teachers around the world had to turn on their laptops and get creative.
Education centers had to completely rethink the way they were teaching. Doing video conferences and online tests. Although e-learning had been growing consistently for years, the pandemic gave the industry a much-needed boost, opening the doors to a whole new way of conducting education.
But not everything revolves around formal education: you may have heard of or used Udemy, or Coursera before. These learning platforms are facilitating access to education worldwide, making it easy for students to learn with just a computer and internet connection.
3. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies
VR and AR have been growing non-stop during the past year and were one of our trends to watch in 2020. These technologies are becoming more and more intertwined with daily life, with companies like Apple making it a key piece in their future plans.
As we turned to remote work and online education, AR and VR found their place in the world. Enabling a big transformation across different industries: be it sports, real estate, travel, or medicine. And it's just the tip of the iceberg, businesses are embracing and adopting these technologies as users get more familiar with them, and there's still a lot of room for growth and innovation.
4. A.I. and automation
Artificial Intelligence and automation have become more and more popular, thanks to the boom in machine learning. Manufacturing and healthcare, to mention a few, are turning to them to assist in their daily operations.
While automation will play a key role in helping manufacturing become more efficient, with the help of the robotics sector, in the field of healthcare, AI is assisting doctors in properly diagnosing diseases like cancer, with surprising accuracy. Proving human and tech can do great things together.
Due to the current pandemic, tech trends and breakthroughs in 2021 will certainly be pretty similar to 2020. However, many of the things that were new to us in the past year will have probably become our usual behavior, helping boost sectors like online education, telemedicine, or remote work even more than in the past.