Dear Friends,
Today
is the day when we bid farewell to the year 2013 and usher in the new year
2014. The year 2013 was rather a mixed bag and it was an year where we saw
green shoots and some semblance of stability emerging all over the place be it
in terms of the global economic performance in both ‘Developed Economies’ as
well as ‘Developing Economies’. Some might argue that the ‘Developing
Economies’ have not grown as well as expected but then it is a rather difficult
task to sustain double digit GDP growth rates in today’s world where the entire
global economy is intertwined and interdependent.
The
Euro Zone which was on a brink of collapse in end 2012 has limped back to near
normalcy in 2013. While the GDP growth rate in the Euro Zone will still
contract this year, there are pockets of excellence and growth. Besides the
doomsday talks of Euro Zone collapsing have shifted to the sidelines. The US
market has responded well to the stimulus and there is an upsurge in the
consumer spending all over. The unemployment figure at 7% is the lowest among
the past many years in the US history. There was a talk about the withdrawal of
the stimulus by the Fed which has led to a severe crash in the markets of the
developing countries such as India and China with many investors pulling out
money from these countries in the hope of getting better and safe returns at
their home ground in the US.
Back
home in India, 2013 was not a great year by any standards. We had issues with
Current Account Deficit, Fiscal Deficit and all those vital parameters that are
not good for the economy. The country will have the General Elections in
mid-2014 and we need to elect a government that will address the economic
ills plaguing the country and make the GDP growth accelerate to double digit
numbers. India has been ranked almost at the bottom of the list when it
comes to ‘ease of doing business’. We have to resolve issues around Land
Acquisitions for projects, Speedy Environmental clearances, Carry out labor
reforms in tune with modern times, develop the roads, ports and power related
infrastructure. We will also at the same time need to make the environment
congenial to attract FDI, stop retrospective law promulgations, initiate
reforms in sectors like Financial Services and Retail. It is also imperative to
make the growth ‘inclusive’ to take care of 70% of our population who stay in
rural areas. We need to improve a lot in nutrition, health care and primary
education kind of areas which are the most basic indicators of a
country’s development.
On the
technology front we would not have imagined 3 years back that Samsung would
give a run for Apple’s money in its top end phone and tablets segment ( the
mobile world congress this year has coined a new term called as “Phablet” which
is a mixture of a phone plus tablet!). Apple in the post Steve Jobs era
has been relegated to doing incremental innovation rather than radical
innovation. Apple has been talking about Apple TV and Apple iWatch for quite
some time now and Samsung was already in the market in 2013 with wearable
devices such as Galaxy Gear (wearable) and Smart TV. Google has taken augmented
reality to the next level with the introduction of its ‘Google Glass’. The
merger of Nokia Mobile Phones with Microsoft is also a new defining moment and
we might see Microsoft (which will soon get a new CEO) getting back in the
market as a force to reckon with. CISCO has laid a strong foundation in the
areas such as ‘Software Defined Networks’ and ‘Internet of Everything’. Kiva
which is a small company based in the US has revolutionized the warehouse
operations of many big retail chains by deploying armies of robots to carry out
the basic tasks in the ware houses replacing human beings. The “Robotic”
revolution is the way forward for countries like US which have shortage of
low-skilled blue collar workers for carrying out re-shoring and getting
manufacturing back to the US.
Taking
a peek into the year 2014 ahead, we will see the growth of the ‘Internet
of Things’ economy in addition to the acceleration in areas such as Social,
Mobile and Analytics. Analysts estimate that there will be 50 Billion connected
devices by 2030 which is a staggering number. We have firms like Google
making forays in this area with the development of the OS based on Android which
will eventually power refrigerators, washing machines. Air conditioners and the
like. This will in effect make every electrical gadget a computer with an IP
address and which can receive, process and send data. We might see the Google’s
Driverless Car becoming a reality in 2014. We will see an evolution in the area
of “Computers enabled by Cognitive thinking” which will use natural language
processing and carry out a lot of repetitive work including basic computer
programming and applications development. IBM’s Watson which won Jeopardy and
also had earlier defeated the reigning world Chess Champion will start offering
the APIs on the cloud so that engineers working in fields that require
“Cognitive thinking and human like thinking” will leverage this by paying a
small amount of fee for the cloud based access.
SEASON’S GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES FOR A
HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2014!
Best Regards,
Deepak Pelluru
Deepak Pelluru
