Covid…
Or should I say Coronavirus?
No matter what you call it, This name or this thing is now feared by almost everyone in the world. Even if you pick any random homeless people and if you ask them about covid, they’ll tell you.
We are experiencing something which was beyond our imagination, a deadly global pandemic. It was the first time wherein countries had to go under a process of lockdown. Every business sector, no matter small or big, took a huge hit. Cases wherein companies belonging to different fields had to close because they couldn’t survive anymore. People lost their jobs, lives, and whatnot.
Taking the focus on the technology sector, the pandemic has disrupted it in many ways but at the same time has done wonderful things too. Companies that are responsible for the production of pieces of equipment such as chips, processors, smartphones, and every hardware material we can think of face some tremendous difficulties in fully starting their production factories due to the unavailability of workers and an unpredictable supply of raw materials. A cumulatively estimated loss of Rupees 15000 crores was suffered by such companies. Some start-ups in the hardware sector were forced to shut down because they couldn’t survive or make money that could even equal their investment.
IT is one of the industries that is finding it easy to sustain and survive in this deadly pandemic. The IT sector was one of the sectors that were functioning during the lockdown period and providing IT services to its clients. This was only possible because of remote working. IT companies had ordered their employees to work from home. “Work from home” was an integral ingredient that was keeping IT companies running and making money because now such companies could communicate, build, deliver and maintain all of their projects. According to reports, 74% of people belonging to India started to work from home. Organizations dealing with education, entertainment, and banking decided to take their business online because of the situation, this brought more work for IT companies thus giving them a further economic boost. Governments from all over the world too decided to take their services and work online so that they could still serve and communicate with their folk, also making sure that the IT sector was reaching heights that it had never before.
Companies that provide network services and deal with communications also saw a huge rise in their work. Teleconferencing software has now become a key product that is needed for every company to have. No one knew that there were apps like zoom and web that existed on the play store and AppStore but now 62 million people use these apps for work. A report by App Annie, that figure was up 45% from the week before and up 90% from the pre-Covid-19 weekly download average. Business application downloads represent that it was the highest growth in any category in both the iOS and Google Play stores.
This crisis gave many opportunities for different technology sectors to emerge such as telehealth. Telehealth is an emerging industry that showed that there was no need for a physician to be physically present to diagnose his or her patient, it showed that everything could be taken on a virtual platform. It was also now possible for people to get medicines at their doorstep. Medical applications played a major role in helping people who were self-quarantined and needed medical assistance and supervision every day.
Digital Marketing, a term that was frequently used during the covid-19 period also experienced a boost of 27% globally. People became aware that marketing on the internet could reach more people in a short time than marketing physically or using ads. Companies that used the medium of digital marketing saw a 12% rise in getting new customers.
Even after all this, compared to many other industries, the IT industry is expected to have an enormous market boom from US$ 131 Billion in 2020 to US$ 295 in the next five years by 2025. The reason for this boom was that people understood how important the internet is and how it has helped them to survive, be safe, and evolve during the pandemic. The technology sector has now become bigger than before by expanding and making way for almost every other industry and company. To conclude, this pandemic has many disguised benefits that are making the technology sector stronger and more efficient than ever before. The pandemic has shown that it is the technology that will shape the future of other industries and the world.
