Source : Gadgets360<\/p>\n
Predicting the future is hard, even for the people with the most power to influence it. In 2013, Jeff Bezos said he expected Amazon.com Inc. would be delivering packages by drone in four to five years. Here we are seven years later, the flying delivery robots Bezos envisioned are still at the testing stage and have just started to get regulatory approval in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Corporate fortune telling is a common practice in the technology industry, and executives tend to choose round numbers as deadlines for their technological fantasies. So, as 2019 draws to a close and we approach a new decade, let’s take a look back at how some of the tech industry’s predictions for 2020 fared.<\/p>\n
Gordon Moore was famous for his foresight about the development of cheaper and more advanced computers. Intel, the company he co-founded, stayed in the prognostication game years after Moore retired, with mixed results. In 2012, Intel predicted a form of ubiquitous computing that would consume almost zero energy by 2020. The date is almost here, and phones still barely last a day before needing a recharge. The i9, Intel’s latest top-of-the-line computer chip, requires 165 watts of energy. That’s more than twice as much as a 65-inch television.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Ericsson Mobility estimated that 90 percent of people on earth over 6 years old would own a mobile phone by 2020. This is a hard one to measure, but a visit to developing countries suggests we are nowhere close. Research firm Statista puts global penetration at 67 percent. One milestone achieved this decade is the number of mobile subscriptions exceeded the world’s population for the first time, according to data compiled by the World Bank. The statistic is skewed by people who use multiple devices. Concern about the potential harmful effects of video game and social-media overuse by children may mean this never happens. There’s now a national movement in the US encouraging parents to wait until kids are in the eighth grade (age 13) before letting them have a smartphone.<\/p>\n
Jet.com was an embodiment of the startup unicorn, before that was even a term. Marc Lore started the online retailer after selling his previous company to Amazon. Jet would challenge Lore’s former employer by offering cheaper prices on products with a subscription that substantially undercut Prime. To do that, Jet quickly started burning through the more than $700 million (roughly Rs. 5,000 crores)\u00a0it had raised from venture capitalists, and critics said the startup had no path to profitability. In response, Lore said on Bloomberg TV in 2015 that Jet would break even by 2020. Walmart swooped in a year after that interview and bought Jet for $3.3 billion (roughly Rs. 23,571 crores). According to news site Vox, Walmart is projecting a loss of more than $1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,142 crores) this year for its US e-commerce division, now led by Lore.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Elon Musk outlined his vision for a new “fifth mode of transportation” that would involve zipping people through tubes at speeds as fast as 800 miles per hour. Several tech entrepreneurs heeded Musk’s call and went to work on such systems inspired by the billionaire’s specifications. In 2015, one of the leading startups predicted a hyperloop spanning about 60 miles would be ready for human transport by 2020. Rob Lloyd, then the CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, told Popular Science: “I’m very confident that’s going to happen.” It hasn’t. His company, now called Virgin Hyperloop One, has a 1,600-foot test track in California and hopes to build a 22-mile track in Saudi Arabia someday. Musk has since experimented with hyperloops of his own, and even he has had to scale back his ambitions. Musk’s Boring is building a so-called Loop system in Las Vegas, starting with a nearly mile-long track that consists of a narrow tunnel and Tesla cars moving at up to 155 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
Selling cloud services became a big business for Amazon, Alibaba Group Holding and\u00a0Microsoft<\/a>\u00a0over the last decade.\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0executive Urs H\u00f6lzle saw the shift coming and in 2015 predicted Google’s cloud revenue would supersede advertising by 2020. Alphabet’s Google has inched closer to Amazon Web Services since then, but it’ll take a lot to outgrow Google’s cash cow. The cloud is expected to represent almost 15 percent of revenue for Google this year, compared with 85 percent for ads.<\/p>\n6. Huawei will make a ‘superphone’<\/h6>\n