By 2022, the tech industry’s vulnerability to the vagaries of geopolitics and macroeconomics will increase as IT giants cut massive layoffs, regulators crack down on tech violators, countries negotiate data privacy, and the EU’s chip war with China expands. It is more evident than ever that the war in Ukraine disrupts business as usual. With the release of ChatGPT, Broadcom looking to acquire VMWare, the Mac renaissance blossoming, teenage hackers bringing big companies to their knees, and all the classic tech themes—including innovation and the fight to tighten cybersecurity—continue throughout. Here are a dozen stories chosen by our editors to rock the tech world in 2022.
Geopolitical tensions between the United States and China rippled through the semiconductor industry in 2022, as President Joe Biden’s administration in December issued new export controls that prevent U.S. companies from selling advanced semiconductors to certain Chinese manufacturers as well as those used in manufacturing their devices and then expanded those restrictions in December. Industry insiders said the restrictions signaled the end of an era of increasing globalization and lamented that they would wreak havoc on supply chains for products based on chip technology, from computers to electric cars, seizing on the two global superpowers. A crossfire between various businesses.
Despite the overall slowdown in the technology M&A market in 2022, there are still many big deals, including Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activation Blizzard (still under regulatory review). The highlight in enterprise computing, however, was undoubtedly silicon giant Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of virtualization giant VMware, announced in late May. The idea is to improve Broadcom’s bottom line, provide synergy between software and hardware products, and support products for multi-cloud computing environments. The deal still needs regulatory approval, which raises some questions: Regulators in the U.S., U.K. and EU have launched investigations that have yet to be concluded and may be listening to critics who say Broadcom has a history of acquiring companies , shutting down R&D and raising prices.
The beta version of ChatGPT, the OpenAI Foundation’s latest project, combines natural language processing with search capabilities to create stunningly naturalistic articles and content that is taking the internet by storm. According to reviewers, it’s a system that can easily pass the Turing test and respond extremely human-like to writing prompts, but still exposes many of the flaws of previous AI-based systems – among other things Furthermore, it makes up for everything, is limited by the bias of the information it seeks, and does not specify the sources of the information it uses. While it may be used as a writing tool or aid in some situations, it’s generally unlikely to replace human-generated work anytime soon.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s November executive order implementing the Transatlantic Data Policy Framework rules has given hope to companies hoping to ease the onerous legal work required for EU-U.S. data transfers. The move comes after the European Court of Justice upended two previous agreements – the Privacy Shield and Safe Harbor – on the grounds that the United States did not provide adequate protection for personal data. Under the new agreement, companies can choose to join a framework agreement rather than having to sign separate agreements with multiple companies. But don’t celebrate just yet. The deal still needs to be approved by several EU institutions and has been criticized for the same core issue as earlier deals: a lack of protection from U.S. state surveillance.
Decline in PC sales has been noted in many quarters due to rapidly changing demand due to pandemic-induced changes in work patterns and many other factors. However, Apple’s share of the overall endpoint market has grown, especially in certain segments. The latest market share figures show the company is outselling all of its rivals in tablets and making significant inroads in laptop sales. First-time buyers of Apple products in particular have been increasing, indicating renewed interest. As Mac sales hit an all-time high in the company’s history and Apple continues its push to market Macs and iPads as productivity companions, the company is poised to make further inroads into the enterprise.
Emerald mining heir, (in)famous serial entrepreneur and dangerous carmaker Elon Musk finally bought Twitter for a grand total of $44 billion, apparently after a long “will he or won’t he” fan dance Not enough for him to do his due diligence. The legal battle surrounding his efforts to back out of the deal petered out in late October, and once the deal was completed, Musk immediately made highly unpopular changes, engaging in far-right conspiracy theories and firing many of the employees responsible for keeping the deal alive. Lights on social networks. He pledged to step down as CEO after a Twitter poll made it clear that users wanted him gone, although with typical grace he said he would stay on until he found someone else “stupid enough to take the job.” Work”. While it’s debatable whether the social media company is actually a “tech company,” Microsoft announced in March that its systems had been compromised by the Lapsus$ hacker and ransomware group, which released critical source code for several of the company’s products , including Bing, Bing Maps and Cortana. The group used social engineering attacks to compromise corporate accounts and access Microsoft’s data. The group’s list of victims includes Samsung, Nvidia, Vodafone and Okta among other well-known companies. Arrests in the UK and a review of the group’s tactics reveal that Lapsus$ is made up of inexperienced teenage hackers using “ill-conceived” techniques. Ultimately, the group’s activities highlight one of the biggest cybersecurity issues – ransomware software—and proves that hacking groups don’t need the highest level of technical sophistication to successfully attack sophisticated targets.