BUSINESS NEWS - 2017 was a great year for technology.
It was the year we saw cellphones and social media becoming more powerful tools of change.
We also saw Africa becoming a key player in tech innovations that are improving the lives of people.
Here are our tech wins and fails of 2017:
Tech wins in 2017:
Facebook became a fully integrated social media application
Facebook radically improved their social media product to compete with SnapChat and Instagram this year.
In November, the tech giant announced its new experience called Stories, connecting Messenger Day and Facebook Stories.
They also improved on their privacy settings, video chat capabilities, app specifications and curbing hate speech and abuse.
WhatsApp introduced some exciting new developments
WhatsApp became one of the most widely used social applications in 2017.
With that it strengthened the privacy settings for its more than one billion users.
They introduced security technology that prevents any interception as messages and media travel between devices.
They also introduced a new feature that allows users to revoke or delete messages seven minutes after sending them.
Tech companies today do better than their predecessors
Tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, or ‘GAFA’, make up the four leading tech firms in the world (outside of China).
Together they make over three times the revenue of Microsoft and Intel combined (‘Wintel’, the dominant partnership of the previous cycle), and close to six times that of IBM.
They have become ten times more powerful than their predecessors through a diversified portfolio, ad revenue and competitive response.
South African apps are improving the way we see tech
2017 saw the rise of local app developers competing with international companies and taking a big share of the app market.
Mobile money app, Snapscan is now used by over 25 000 merchants across South Africa, Liberty SA developed Stash to help consumers save the change they have whenever they spend and Stokvel app manages group savings and allows users to record payments and claims from members.
Transport app GoMetro also made inroads giving its users access to information on public transport across SA including Gautrain, MyCiti, Rea Vaya and Golden Arrow buses across Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
