The coronavirus pandemic and its effect on the tech industry
While the rest of the economy is tanking from the crippling impact of the coronavirus, tech companies have almost pretty much remained the same. Excluding the fact that most companies prefer deals to be done in person, it's almost like the tech industry saw this coming.
With people told to work from home and stay away from others, the pandemic has enhanced reliance on services from the technology industry’s biggest companies while accelerating trends that were already benefiting them.
Movie theaters are closed down under government orders, and Netflix and YouTube are gaining a new audience. Government officials in Europe have even asked if Netflix could reduce the video quality of its streams to lighten the strain on the region’s internet network. YouTube also agreed to suspend streaming of high-definition video in Europe for a month.
It all seems good in the tech industry yeah? Well not fast. Facebook has been hit in unexpected ways as well. Apart from cancelling its 5000-person annual marketing conference and the in-person segment of its popular F8 developer conference, the company’s popular VR headset, the Oculus Quest, which has been in high demand since last year’s holiday season is now backlogged for months, and the company has stopped taking further orders because of the production delays caused by the coronavirus.
In addition to production delays, most companies, including Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Google were forced to temporarily close their offices and retail stores across China.
The stocks of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have collectively lost more than $1 trillion in market value from a month ago, when U.S. stocks traded at record highs.
So yes, some aspects of the tech industry concerning hardware and requirement of physical interactions has been greatly affected. However, the software aspect of things have benefited even more from the coronavirus pandemic.
