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The Quiet Side of Tech: Not so Quiet
07 Aug, 2020
5 min read
Tech has been up to quite a lot.
Samsung has a few new phones out including a latest attempt at a folding phone. It will definitely be interesting to see how that pans out. But I am not writing about Samsung to tell you about it’s new phones. The company can’t stop itself from iterating every year anyway, nothing new there.
I am writing about Samsung to tell you about how they partnered with Microsoft. So now the ‘Your Phone’ app on Windows 10 is able to show you Android apps. Ironically, Microsoft beat Google to it; you know the company that owns Android. You can use multiple Android apps at the same time. Of course, all good things have caveats and for this one, it is that you would require a Samsung handset and an opt in to Windows Insider testing.
Samsung Notes app will also sync with Microsoft OneNote app.
When it comes to other OEMs, no one knows. But stay with me for a bit and imagine. Being able to use your Android apps on your computer can completely change your workflow. You don’t have to switch between devices. Especially if you are working on social media or developing apps.
It is a close copy of what MacOS has promised. And I am definitely here for it when more Android devices get support for this. It also challenges and encourages the shifts and fluidity of input devices of these screens, from mouse, to keyboard, stylus and fingers.
Last week, there was an antitrust hearing for Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook in front of the House Judiciary Committee. I won’t attempt to deconstruct that for you, because The Verge did it better. But I will tell you that when you put the Big Four together to convince everyone that they are not too big and they have fair competition, when everyone can see that’s not true, it can give you good jokes. At the very least.
Moreover, it can tell so much more about these companies that we as consumers, both B2B and B2C don’t think about as much as we should. Here are a few rather interesting things we found: Documents show Apple gave Amazon special treatment to get Prime Video into App Store
Emails show Mark Zuckerberg feared app startups were building faster than Facebook in 2012
So much for fair practices.
Oh and, In the pandemic economy, tech companies are raking it in. A day after the hearing, Amazon, Apple and Facebook got bigger.
Cool.
On a slightly related note, here’s a bit about Amazon and Airtel.
A few days back people on Twitter were wondering about what’s cooking between Amazon and Airtel as they announced a press briefing that was supposed to take place on August 5th 2020.
This comes just days after we all heard about Google and Jio, tech giant from US and telecom giant from India respectively, joining hands where Google invested a whooping $4.5 billion for 7.73% of Jio’s shares.
A deal on the similar lines was signed between Amazon AWS and Bharti Airtel on 5th August for 10 years where they will collaboratively provide cloud services to SMBs in India. Bharti Airtel has around 2500 enterprises and a million small and medium businesses who use their products including Airtel cloud, a multi-cloud product and also offer them other business solutions. They are the third largest telecom company in India.
AWS already had a stronghold in India’s cloud services market and this deal will go a long way for them in maintaining that stronghold and further expanding it among small and medium businesses.
India is the second largest internet market in the world where nearly half a billion people started using the internet in the past decade. And with Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative, many emerging and small businesses have started using digital platforms, space, storage services, tools, and have also started accepting online payments.
Under this deal, Bharti Airtel will be acting as a channel partner where they will sell AWS products bundled with their public cloud services.
“At Airtel, our endeavour is to enable enterprise customers to stay focused on their core businesses while we drive end-to-end digital transformation for them. As part of their cloud adoption journey, enterprises are looking for agility, faster migration from legacy systems, and want to work with trusted partners who have the experience and depth in doing this. This collaboration brings AWS, the world’s leading cloud platform, together with Airtel’s deep reach and proven expertise in handling network, data centers, security, and cloud as an integrated solution.” said Harmeen Mehta, CIO & Head – Cloud and Security Business, Bharti Airtel.
India’s cloud market is estimated to reach $7.1 billion by 2024, according to a research firm IDC.
To learn more about this deal, you can read Airtle’s press release from here.
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