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No one was prepared for a global pandemic like Coronavirus. Since the initial outbreak of the virus hit China, the world started to feel the tremors. Almost every country on the globe is affected by Coronavirus, and it is continuously spreading over the world. People are indeed suffering due to Coronavirus in different ways. From the general public to industries, everyone is sharing their portion of losses. The global pandemic is continuously increasing, with a staggering rate of cases, and the number is continuously staggering and further worsening the situation even further. With social distancing and lockdown situations, industries are drenched in losses.

When it comes to measuring the industrial losses, every sector has its story of grief to tell. Even, telecommunications and consumer technology sectors have started to feel the effects of Coronavirus. During the initial outbreak in the Wuhan City of China, only the global supply chain was primarily affected, but, as the situation started to get worse, the loss became far-reaching and volatile across the industries.

How is Coronavirus Impacting The Telecommunications And Tech Industry?

Just like any other prominent global industry, the telecommunications sector has been going through the consequences of the Coronavirus. The first hit for the industry was the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress, a seminar in the telecommunications sector. Due to the mass lockdown, employees are compelled to turn to remote working, and the sector has started to miss the prominent opportunities and witness delays in the initiatives. Though the telecommunication industry is coping with the distress and trying its way around, there are several ways in which Coronavirus can possibly affect the industry in the coming years.

Here are a few ways in which Coronavirus can continue to impact the industry throughout the year-:

Missed Partnership Opportunities

As people are taking their work home, there are increased chances of missed opportunities. Over this short period of time, many important tech conferences had to be canceled that have resulted in huge losses. The major setback was the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress scheduled to happen in February. It is considered as the most significant event in the tech industry where companies share their innovations and engage in partnerships.

Apart from the Mobile World Congress, Facebook had to cancel the F8 Developer Conference Global Marketing Summit, Google had to postpone the Google Cloud Next, and IBM turned to live streaming for its developer’s conference. The cancellation of these events has set to a loss of $1 billion that can prove to be severe for the industries.

Highlight The Use of Virtual Reality in Business

The current pandemic has alarmed the big tech players in the market like Google, Microsoft, and Apple and compelled them to think about lasting and reliable tech solutions. It has become more than necessary for businesses to find sustainable solutions. It can be safely predicted that virtual reality can create a breakthrough for companies to steer through this tough phase.

New and grave drawbacks have been continuously emerging in the tech industry, and only virtual reality can prove to be a sustainable solution to all the problems. Sales and training can be made simpler with the help of virtual reality. So, in the coming years, companies should concentrate more on virtual reality to strengthen their functions.

Need For 5G Technology

5G is known for its lightning-fast speed and instantaneous communications. As people are increasingly shifting towards remote working, the need for 5G has been augmented even more further. Organizations have been thinking about adopting 5G technology in the long term. There are two key areas: telehealth, teleconferencing which has become critical for operations amongst this pandemic. People highly dependent on these areas will further strengthen the need for 5G. Telehealth is the ideal solution for efficiently combating the Coronavirus.

The broad reach of 5G expanded the range of medical expertise and services. Teleconferencing has also been increased in this lockdown period that would require massive bandwidth. Employees gradually depend on the teleconferencing tool that will eventually require 5G connectivity in the home. More IT solutions are needed to improve the tech scenario and facilitate better communications.

Disruption in The Supply Chain

The major impact of Coronavirus that has shaken the industries is definitely the disruption in the supply chain. Originated from the Wuhan city in China, Coronavirus started to showcase its impact from December last year when major supply markets were shut down. As the virus began to expand its severity, major manufacturing factories started to shut down partially and completely. Many of the tech industry also suffered from a shortage of supply. For instance, Apple was hugely affected as there was a scarcity of iPhone supply which led to a delay in the shipment of the phones.

Many of the companies had contingency plans that helped them to steer through the situation. The rapid increase in the cases and the severity of the condition further makes it hard to detect which industry is the least affected. Though industries have been taking initiatives to keep things under control, it is hard to tell how much time it will take to recover from the losses. According to industry estimates, it will take at least 2-3 years to gain back the lost sales and improve the manufacturing processes.

Investment in Smart City

It has been witnessed that cities with smart technology had the potential to mitigate the effects of Coronavirus. It clearly states that there’s a dire need for developing smart cities as much as possible. It is the only sustainable way to mitigate the risk and create a safe environment for the coming generation. Smart cities are already under the plan and with the current pandemic situation, the investments are more likely to grow throughout the year. Not just smart cities, smart technologies are also being used to overcome the difficulties in this time of crisis.

For instance, China police are using thermal sensor drones to detect people walking in the crowd with a fever. The South Korean government has launched an app that connects the self-quarantine people with the caseworkers to get a better idea regarding their situation and monitor their progress as well. The Australian government has released a chatbot to answer the queries and questions from the general public regarding the spread. Not just these countries, plenty of other countries have taken their share of preventive measures to keep things under control. Smart technologies are going to be a prominent part of our lives post-corona period as well.

The Bottom Line

Coronavirus is drastically affecting the industries across the globe. Telecommunications and tech industries are also among those affected sectors that are facing losses. Many of the tech projects, proposals, and initiatives have come to a standstill resulting in humongous losses. Though the solutions for the impact are far-reaching, industries have been trying to find achievable and efficient solutions.

Smart cities are considered to be a significant investment in these times of crisis. It has been estimated that investment in the smart city will mount up to $295 million by 2025. It is predicted that initiatives like smart cities will be an effective solution to deal with pandemics like this. The above mentioned were five major impacts Coronavirus can have on the tech industries throughout the year.

Launching a new product in the highly competitive market of today is really a big deal. It encompasses more than simply taking care of the quality and keeping the price just right. And, this is where the concept of product/market fit comes into the picture.

To offer a simple definition, product/market fit is the extent to which a product is able to satisfy the market demands. To explain it further, it is the analysis of whether the product slated to be launched has the ability to survive in the market, earn profits, and continue generating revenue.

Marc Andreessen, an American investor, and entrepreneur is credited to be the one who coined the term. He divided the life of a startup into two different stages, i.e. BPMF (Before Product/Market Fit) and APMF (After Product/Market Fit).

So, what are the ways to measure this product/market fit? What metrics have to be analyzed to understand if your product fits the market just right?

Basically, assessing a product can be done in three ways before launching it in the market, namely, MVP (Minimum Viable Product), Prototype, and PoC (Proof of Concept).

Read on to understand in each of these types in detail, their differences, and find out which one can be the best bet for assessing product/market fit. So, without further ado, let’s get on with it.

Prototype

So, let’s begin this discussion with prototype. It is that part of your product design that enables your business to test out a process or concept. Prototype is a highly interactive model, which helps in understanding the workflow, along with its usefulness.

It makes it easy to visualize user experience even before you start developing your product. Though when thinking about prototype vs proof of concept, it is not like a separate system, but prototype gives a good idea of the kind of user experience you can expect from your product.

Using prototypes helps the startups to find the faults and errors, which affect the flow of an app or hamper the user experience. The usual components of the prototype are user flows, design layouts, mock-up, and wireframes. You can create four different kinds of prototypes for testing, namely, visual prototype, working prototype, functional prototype, and user experience prototype.

It is something that is of great help in the assessment of how seamless the journey of a user can be with your product. A prototype is a useful method for measuring product/market fit because of the given reasons:

Prototypes let the businesses understand all the lags in their product, and that too, before they start developing the product
One of the major factors in retaining customers is user experience, and a prototype helps in the assessment of that
Prototype is the swiftest way of testing the acceptance, scalability, and feasibility of a product along with the visual effects
It needs way less investment when it is considered in terms of time, efforts, and finances
Prototype informs the businesses about the limitations of the system at the initial stage

Proof of concept

As you can well guess by the name, proof of concept is useful in testing out the viability of a product in terms of practical implementation. The idea that came to your mind? Proof of concept is one of the most ingenious ways to test out if that idea is at all operational.

For the development of the proof of concept, a small-scale project, along with a fundamental functionality, gets executed. It does not get disclosed publicly or even to your customers. This helps in the examination of whether or not the environments, platforms, or technologies are available for creating a solution. After the proof of concept is able to prove the functional or technical feasibility of the project, the process of product development starts.

Given below are a few of the reasons why proof of concept is held as a viable way of measuring product/market fit:

Proof of concept in the short term procedure for testing the potential and viability of the projects
You get a quick ‘no’ or ‘yes’ response regarding the feasibility of a project
Proof of concept helps in disclosing the faults, bugs, or errors in the system or idea during the initial stages
It does not take much time in validating whether or not you are going in the proper direction
It is able to help you figure out the alternative solutions to the problems, in case the one you are considering seems unfeasible

Minimum Viable Product

The Minimum Viable Product is the first version of a product that is planned and created for testing the market acceptance of the idea. To give you a brief idea, MVP is like the base model of the product, with the minimum but the most important features of it.

MVP is known as one of the most used approaches for measuring product/market fit because it lets the products reach the market. It also helps in understanding how the users perceive a product, the hindrances to its performances, and the improvements that can be brought about for making the product more useful in terms of UX, UI, and the technical aspects.

After all these aspects get analyzed, the businesses are able to invest confidently in the future development of a product, think about premium features and services, and expect to get a good return on the investment.

Let’s take the example of Uber to understand it further. It is one of the most popular apps all over the globe to hail a cab. Initially, Uber had launched the app with just a couple of core features and the app saw improvements with each new version. Right now, the Uber app comes with an extensive lineup of features, which were introduced after the assessment of user experience with earlier versions.

That was just an example of Uber. Most of the popular businesses that you know today began with the MVP, and then they grew as they got more and more user acceptance. MVP is actually one of the most in-demand approaches for measuring product/market fit for the reasons given below:

You get to start in a small way and then evolve as your users start accepting the product
MVP allows you to come into the market with a comparatively small investment
It allows you to understand all the lags in the product and the ways to improve the product
It helps in understanding whether the amount of effort, money, and time you invest in the product are worth it
It helps you to know your target audience and their expectations from your product

So, MVP vs prototype vs. Poc: which one is it going to be?

Of all these approaches used for measuring product/market fit, the best approach that a mobile app development agency can take is that of the MVP. It allows you to test the product viability and user experience and also lets the user validate the potential of the product.

However, there is no reason to think that PoC and prototype are not useful on their own. They might not be the best possible approach for measuring product/market fit, but they let the businesses assess the feasibility of the product at the initial stage. The truth is, it all depends on the business idea, to a great extent.

Category: Technology

5 Ways Coronavirus Will Affect The Connectivity And Tech Industry in 2020