2022 is a year that we would say is full of drama and big news in the technology arena, in terms of company takeovers, digital security issues, announcements of new technologies and even new policies that shape how their companies operate. devices for the future. These are 10 of the biggest tech stories we've covered throughout 2022.
1. 5G In Malaysia – Good News From The Looks
The development of Malaysia's 5G telecommunications network which began in 2019 through the NFCP program should give the people of this country the opportunity to enjoy advantages such as high-speed mobile internet and also allow more Malaysians to take advantage of online services more widely.
Unfortunately, four years later, due to the COVID epidemic and also the change of government has made it difficult to develop this network. The development and supervision of the 5G network has been taken over by Digital Nasional Berhad, a government agency under the Malaysian Ministry of Finance.
Technically, this network is already active in Malaysia, where it was first used by Yes, and half a year later, companies such as Digi, Celcom and U Mobile have already expressed their willingness to use DNB's infrastructure to activate their 5G network support.
Maxis is the only local telecommunications giant that has yet to issue an official statement that they will use the same infrastructure, but has recently been found to be testing the network in several locations.
Although the Ministry of Communications and Digital has just announced that the 5G network is now offered in 40 percent of populated areas throughout Malaysia, another issue present is that support for 5G network devices is still limited.
This is because even though the latest devices support 5G networks, they still need to get a software update to activate the support. Brands like ASUS, Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO and so on can introduce these updates to their devices at a fast pace, but brands like Apple have only recently introduced such support updates.
Although support for this 5G network is already active, so far it can be seen that only Yes has a dedicated 5G network plan so far. Companies such as Digi, Celcom and others are currently rolling out 5G support to existing network plans, with Celcom saying on their website that this is temporary.
So far, the Minister of Communications and Digital, Fahmi Fadzil has said that the government and DNB will discuss to ensure that this network can be used by the public as soon as possible.
It is hoped that we will be able to see the full implementation of this 5G network around the beginning or middle of next year.
2.Elon Musk buys Twitter For $44 Billion
In the middle of this year, Elon Musk, the CEO of automotive companies Tesla and SpaceX has expressed his interest in developing his own social media platform to compete with Twitter and Facebook.
A few months later, Elon Musk expressed his intention to buy the social media company Twitter for $44 billion, where most of the money came from loans from bank institutions and part of it was the sale of shares in Tesla worth $8 billion.
After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk then took the company back private, and fired a large number of the company's developers and executives to cut costs.
Although Twitter has now introduced a number of new features at a faster pace than before, they have also reportedly terminated almost all of their content moderation teams worldwide and have done strange things like bringing back individuals who had already been kicked off the platform. said because of offenses such as spreading racial slander.
One of the effects of the platform's instability can also be seen from the announcements issued by a number of advertisers on the platform who reportedly no longer buy ads in the near future because they want to see the platform return to stability before spending money on ads.
Even Elon Musk was seen clashing with Apple for a while, before being invited to Cupertino, and Apple is now back advertising on the platform.
For now, it is not yet known how Elon Musk wants to ensure that the platform he now owns does not burn up and be buried like what happened to Friendster and MySpace before it.
3. Priceless or worthless? – The Fall Of Crypto And NFT
The hottest topic at the end of 2021 will be the value of major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and the soaring Ethereum creating thousands of young millionaires. At this peak, many people began to say that cryptocurrency would replace fiat currency in 2023. Early on, the value of crypto began to shrink and one of the ways to increase it again was to introduce Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT).
Various NFT projects are becoming the talk of the town. Board Ape Yacht Club is the most popular NFT because it is owned by crypto-entrepreneurs, artists, sports athletes and millionaires who want to own a series that also gives access to exclusive clubs.
The NFT craze caused many new projects to be launched with various additional features such as metacity worlds, and video games. In Malaysia Pentas.io has long been the main NFT trading platform for local users. Many believe that through the power of NFT and crypto they will become tycoons to the moon. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter support the display of NFT collections built to follow the hottest trends of early 2022.
But we are now at the end of December 2022. The value of major cryptocurrencies is at its lowest level in two years. The NFT market which peaked around April is now down 97% with the majority of launched projects now worthless after falling victim to the Rug Pull.
Various warnings have been given at the beginning of the year about the risks of NFT and crypto investments but armed with the DYOR motto, many are living on a shoestring with fiat retirement savings turning into crappy JPEG images online that are worthless.
4.Meta Misery Due to the Development of Metamesta World
In 2021, Facebook as a company has rebranded itself to Meta, which is part of the company's efforts to become a leading virtual reality technology company and also a digital world called the metaverse.
The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg said himself that the plan to bring this metaverse concept to the mainstream will consume a very high budget and will take 3-5 years.
For this first year, Meta is seen to have fallen in terms of technology companies with the highest market capitalization when compared to Apple, Microsoft, Google and so on.
In fact, the value of Mark Zuckerberg's own wealth is seen to plummet. If previously his wealth value was seen to exceed $140 billion and put him among the three richest individuals in the world, his focus on developing this metaverse technology caused him to lose around $100 billion of that value.
Not only that, Meta is also seen to have laid off around 10 thousand workers recently due to the global economic turmoil that forced them to do so. To make matters worse, WhatsApp and Instagram, two companies under the auspices of Meta, have also faced issues of access several times this year, which has led to calls for the separation of these companies by the United States government itself.
5. Personal Information is Now in Public View
The year 2022 is also a year in which digital security has become a problem that plagues all levels of society, not only in terms of company data, but also in the government sector.
Ransomware, or ransomware is once again the main way for hackers to get money from small and large companies, especially those that have a lot of secret information that should not be revealed to the public.
One of the biggest examples of malware attacks this year involved Air Asia who confirmed that their database had been hacked with malware that exposed details of the company's employees and customers/
The government, through the new Ministry of Digital Communications has issued a statement on this matter, and appears to be working with Capital A (Air Asia's parent company) to ensure that this user data and data leakage issue does not happen again.
Malaysia's biggest data leakage issue to date was probably the incident a few months ago where we reported that the personal details of over 20 million Malaysians were sold on the dark web, some of which were even displayed for public viewing before any malicious individuals made a decision. to buy it.
Although it is said that the leaked data was obtained through the National Registration Department, former Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin said that the data may have been collected from a number of other government agencies and not from the National Registration Department.
Even so, he also confirmed that the MyIdentity API, which is suspected of being used to steal the data, has been restricted to 44 government agencies only to reduce the possibility of this API being misused.
6.Apple Finally Forced to Use USB-C on iPhone
Much has been said this year about how Apple will eventually use USB Type-C plugs for charging plugs for their iPhone devices.
Until now, Apple's stubbornness in not changing the Lightning charging plug to USB Type-C remains an unanswered question mark. Their other flagship devices such as the iPad and MacBook series have on average converted to USB Type-C over the past few years without issue.
The European Union has recently issued a mandate that by 2024, all electronic devices sold in the region should use USB Type-C plugs as charging plugs. This means that accessories such as wireless headphones and earphones will also need to use the plug.
This is seen to eat into Apple's profits in terms of sales of accessories such as charging cables, because Apple previously licensed the label "Made For iPhone" or MFi for accessory manufacturers who want to sell certified Lightning cables for use with Apple products.
The transition to USB Type-C also means that at least for iPhone Pro and Pro Max devices, it will come with a higher data transfer rate for the purpose of transferring ProRes videos faster.
Apple may be seen as the biggest victim of this change, the mandate to use the USB Type-C charging plug is for all companies that manufacture electronic products. By 2024, it is expected that old-fashioned plugs such as USB Type-B, mini-USB and micro-USB will also be phased out, especially in the European region.
7.Creative Artificial Intelligence Services Are Increasingly Popular – Raising Ethical Issues
If the concept of artificial intelligence was previously shown through animal robots, chess player robots and so on, this year, the popularity of artificial intelligence has increased dramatically through digital art services that are more and more similar to paintings sketched by an artist.
In 2021, OpenAI introduced DALL-E, an online artificial intelligence service that allows users to "create" art content using words typed into the search box.
The drawings shown are usually pretty bad and very funny to look at, and are used for "meme" purposes only. But all that changed this year when new artificial intelligence applications such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney to create creative content easily and quickly.
ChatGPT, another artificial intelligence "service" by OpenAI is a chat bot that has learned ways to answer questions and also provide information to users.
In fact, among his abilities is to write short stories using only simple keywords, and this raises concerns about the ethics of using artificial intelligence to release all responsibility for what is posted on the internet.
Not only that, these "artificial intelligence" artists are also seen stealing the content of internet artists as their "learning resources", and this causes the way these artists paint to be stolen by the machines.
Conversations about the "ethics" of artificial intelligence have already begun, and it is expected that the initial wars of humans against robots will be about things like art and writing.
8. Russia Imposes Economic Sanctions Due to War With Ukraine
A few years after conquering the Crimea region, Russia is seen acting to start a war to conquer the whole of Ukraine. Because of this, the whole world, including the leading conglomerate companies all began to withdraw and withdraw their brands from the country.
The economic sanctions imposed on Russia are not limited to the cessation of trade between countries. Technology brands such as Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, ASUS, HP and so on no longer sell their products in the country, and even chip makers in Russia can no longer use TSMC's services to manufacture their chips.
In fact, the use of international banking services is also frozen and many content creators who use services such as SWIFT, Stripe, PayPal and so on can no longer transfer money to their local bank accounts.
One issue that seems to be plaguing the world of technology right now is the supply of neon gas needed for global semiconductor chip production. Ukraine is seen as the main supplier of the gas, with 45 percent of global consumption coming from the country.
Although the existing supply is said to be sufficient for the near term, the long life of the war will cause harm not only to Ukraine, but also to regional countries and even the global technology market.
9. Display Innovations Finally Breathe New Life into the Device Industry
When devices with foldable screens were introduced in 2019 through the Huawei Mate X and also the Samsung Galaxy Fold, it was seen as quite an interesting concept because users could finally see a design concept that was not just a boring square.
However, although these foldable devices were seen as a very interesting concept, at the time it was seen that the most significant shortcoming of these devices was on the part of the screen that not only showed the obvious folding effect, but also a concern to physical lifespan after it has been opened and closed hundreds or thousands of times.
Companies such as Huawei, Samsung, BOE, TCL, Royole and so on have developed foldable screens that are more sophisticated and powerful than the previous year, and have introduced new devices that use them.
Samsung in particular is seen to have launched three more foldable smart devices over the years, where they say they want to make foldable devices like these enter the mainstream.
Their Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip series of devices are still seen as premium devices, but with a production rate of once per year, Samsung seems to be serious about making these devices more accessible.
Aside from Samsung, OPPO is also seen entering this arena with their OPPO N series of devices, which has now entered its second generation with the OPPO N2 offering and also their first "Flip" type device with the OPPO N2 Flip.
ASUS and Lenovo also introduced their own foldable devices through Project Precog and the ASUS ZenBook 17 Fold OLED and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold which is now also in its second generation.
LG has also introduced their rollable television, the LG Signature Rollable OLED TV R which also saw the introduction of the second generation earlier this year.
This advancement in foldable/rollable display technology has already begun to be more widely accepted not only by consumers, but electronic brands that want to present new offerings to their customers.
It is also hoped that with these offers, the selling prices for these devices will also become more affordable soon.
10. Merger of Tech Giants – Monopoly
2022 is also a year where it can be shown that a number of companies want to try to merge to become a giant conglomerate that can compete with brands like Apple, Google, Intel and so on.
In 2020, NVIDIA has expressed its intention to take over the holding of ARM processing chip technology company from Softbank with an offer as high as $40 billion. This announcement comes as a surprise because NVIDIA is seen as wanting to conquer the mobile processing chip market as well, and this takeover is the easiest way to do it.
Despite this, opposition from various processing chip manufacturers and even governments involved with Arm forced NVIDIA to cancel its intention to take over Arm.
Issues such as market monopoly and ownership of technology that NVIDIA can take advantage of led the Federal Trade Commission to sue NVIDIA, while the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) also prevented the acquisition because it did not want Arm's technology to move out of the United Kingdom for reasons of security and stability of the industry and the country .
Not only that, NVIDIA also had to pay Arm as much as $1 billion for attempting this acquisition.
Another hotly talked about merger this year is about Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard, where Microsoft wants to add computer games to the Xbox Game Pass list without having to worry about time limits.
There are some who say that this acquisition is a perfect fit because Activision-Blizzard has previously been tied up with quite serious sexual harassment issues, and with Microsoft at the helm of the company.
But the FTC again blocked this takeover due to the likelihood that Activision-Blizzard would not allow their games to be developed on other consoles and concerns about monopoly issues over the video game and computer industries.
In Malaysia, the merger of Celcom and Digi was finally completed with the introduction of the new logo of the combined company. Although it is reported that no major changes will take place in terms of operations, Celcom Digi Sdn Bhd is currently the largest telecommunications service provider in Malaysia.
However, it is expected that Yoodo, a telecommunications subsidiary under Celcom is expected to be sold or closed after 18 months of the merger between Celcom and Digi.