Year 2011, The World’s Technology Flashback

The year 2011 was the biggest year for Sonicorp, we launched our brand new website dedicated to tech enthusiasts and to anyone interested in tech. October 4th was the day Apple’s iPhone 4S was launched. Apple’s first dual-core smartphone is such a success that it is still difficult to acquire one, which is good business strategy working for the Cupertino Company. Unfortunately 2011 also saw one of the biggest creative minds, Steve Jobs parting from this cruel world. Steve Jobs will not be forgotten as he played a huge role in almost everyone’s lives. I have rarely seen a modern household without a single Apple product.

It was a huge year for Android too. Google’s open-source operating system took leaps in just single year becoming one of the most wanted mobile platforms and at times even more desired than the iPhone. It was likely the fragmentation of devices in the market and lack of iPhone availability that played some role in Android’s success. Latest information from ComScore suggested 25% of smartphones in Canada were powered by Android. Research in Motion probably had the worst year of all times with huge outages that affected millions of users and smartphones rushed out the door. RIM even got pulled into the court multiple times; over the term BBX, forcing them to rename it to BlackBerry 10 and then over the term BBM where BBM Canada seems to be taking the hit for use of this term.

Hopefully 2012 will be a new stepping stone year for our beloved Canadian innovation company. We have seen Microsoft emerge with its Windows Phone 7, attempting to get a share of the pie from the smartphone industry, we will have to wait and see how 2012 works out for them – if they don’t dump the idea like many others in the past. Mobile CPUs took a huge step forward in 2011 with the fruit of all hard work to be seen in 2012. Snapdragon detailed S4 Processors with improved power management and speed capabilities up to 2.5GHz – now wait till we get a smartphone with that kind of speed. Dangers lurking around for one of the wireless providers in Canada to either go out of business or get purchased by another rival company.

On the other side of the tech world we are starting to see some high performance super-thin Ultrabooks from Asus, Acer, HP and more – with swivel touch screens that give users the capabilities of running Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 in a old-fashion laptop orientation or as a tablet. This will hopefully fill a gap between people wanting to carry a tablet for convenience and a laptop for full functionality. Sony’s Playstation 3D display arrived on Canadian shelves around November 29 and has seen some moderately good response – I’d definitely want a 24-inch 3D display for just $400. Mazda built a new regenerative braking system for regular Joe internal combustion cars producing around 10% increase in fuel economy, which should show up in your next Mazda purchase in 2012. Victoria, British Columbia is seeing some love from Microsoft Game Studios, which is marked to open early 2012 and will employ over 60 people from local area and around the world.

In a nutshell, 2011 has seen phones jailbroken, Netflix finally arriving to Canadian tablets, competition in mobile industry heating up excessively forcing carriers to loosen up a little, greatest smartphones making it to consumers’ hands, Canada getting some LTE love from Rogers and Bell, some of the best performing computer hardware and peripherals getting unleashed, BBM Music officially rocking BlackBerry users, many Canadian companies going mobile with Apple and Android apps, Roku finally launching their media streamers for Canadians in 2012… The list can go on. Ultimately, we think 2011 was a set-up stage for the next year starting tomorrow and will see some magnificent changes to the tech industry, be it cars, smartphones, computers or home entertainment units. We missed a lot, because we had a short year. Feel free to add to the list of worldly accomplishments in the comments.

Last but not least, we would like to extend our appreciation to all 1,500+ Twitter followers under the three months of launch of our new website, you guys made Sonicorp what it is today, we thank you for it – Happy New Year.