The ups and downs of tech this week
AS USUAL, a lot of tech developments happened last week. Foremost, of course, is the ringing endorsement of President Duterte on the use of technology to improve the lives of the citizens through better government services.
He reiterated during his State of the Nation Address that public offices need to use the computer.
In a way, he is right. For services like getting certifications or licenses, there is no reason for people to contribute to traffic by traveling to the office, and then spend hours waiting in front of offices to be issued permits.
And to give that a boost, he also promised to provide nationwide WiFi access. The Internet is very crucial for better communication and enhanced efficiency.
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In another development, Apple also announced the sale of its one billionth iPhone. Since it was introduced in 2007, the iPhone is one of the best manifestations of tech change, and its introduction ( the smartphone) has revolutionized the way we communicate.
However, there are also less desirable changes. Since its introduction, the sale of iPhones every quarter have increased for seven straight years. But the last two quarters has seen it decline.
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Yahoo also got sold to Verizon for 4.8 billion dollars. Yahoo was one of the most iconic brands that came out of the Internet, and it is really the end of an era, going the way of great brands that have disappeared – Motorola, Kodak, Blackberry, and Nokia.
In 2000, at its peak, Yahoo was worth up to $140 billion. They did a few great things – like bought shares in Alibaba for a hundred million, which later became worth tens of billions – even more than Yahoo itself, but they have had a few misses too. In 1998, when Google was starting, they had a chance to buy it for a million dollars but they did not. In 2008, Yahoo had an offer from Microsoft to buy them for more than $40 billion, but they said no.
Another significant development is Pokemon Go. In just two weeks of introduction, it already got over 75 million downloads, and every day, accidents and funny stories come out all over the world of people getting into trouble be- cause of playing the game.
It was made available only to Japan and Hong Kong two days ago, and we hope the Philippines will be able to launch it soon. The reason they had to scale down the introduction is that the servers cannot handle the load because of too many people playing.
Finally, a little bit of fun: Apple CEO Tim Cook created quite a stir because he mispronounced Pokemon Go during his speech. Just in case you are curious, his version was “Po-kay-man”. And the plural, “Po-kay-mans”. Did you read it right, man?