2016 tech preview: Curved screens were just the beginning
A roller-coaster ride in financial markets, deal frenzy among Chinese Web operators spurred on by Alibaba and Tencent, the rise of Asian unicorns and a baking-hot semiconductor M&A spree: 2015 was a frenetic year for the region's technology sector.
Fasten your seat-belts, there's more excitement to come in 2016. Here are a selection of predictions for the region from Bloomberg's Asia Technology team:
Folding Phones Arrive
Samsung will keep pushing the envelope on displays (a la the curved-screen Galaxy S6 Edge). Slick videos show that a plastic tablet-sized display can fold into a phone before getting tucked back into a shirt pocket. With the South Korean giant desperate to reverse a slide in earnings, 2016 may be the year this long-gestating technology gets unfurled.
Watch Those Chinese Technology IPOs
U.S. investors will tire of opaque Chinese stocks, so tech companies instead choose to list at home. The government's just re-opened a spigot choked off during the summer's market crash, jolting awake dozens of companies stalled on the IPO runway. Newly minted unicorns realize they can get a better deal from cashed-up, hungry Chinese than picky foreigners.
"Baxi 2016"
Meaning "Brazil 2016," the search term embodies China's growing love of international sports and its boom in online and streamed content - both the licensed and unlicensed variety. Hosting the summer Olympics, Brazil videos and blogs will dominate a billion Chinese phones come August, six years before the country hosts the 2022 winter games.
Chinese Chip Ambitions Grow
Carrying on a theme from 2015, expect China to keep snapping up semiconductor technology across the globe. Companies like Tsinghua Unigroup and China Resources Holdings Co. are already making a splash in the sector and, with President Xi Jinping keen to create national champions, there are more deals on the way.
Virtual Reality Heats Up
Samsung, Sony and HTC join Facebook's Oculus in the virtual reality space. Gaming will be the initial focus but it could find other uses going forward.
A Slumbering Indian E-Commerce Giant Awakes
India's railway monopoly is also its largest online commerce player, with 20 million registered users buying 300,000 tickets per day and $2.5 billion in annual sales. It finally upgrades its clunky app and adds a marketplace to hawk more than just railway seats, heeding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to go online, giving Flipkart Online Services Pvt Ltd and Amazon a run for their money.
Asian Moonshots
Japan, India, China and Russia all currently plan missions to the moon. Next year one of them will finalize plans for the first manned lunar trip since American Eugene Cernan stepped back onto Apollo 17 in 1972. Unmanned missions are scheduled, but landing a robot just ain't the same as a human planting a foot and uttering something profound.
Jack Ma Updates Relationship Status With Government
The Alibaba chairman's policy for dealing with the government is to fall in love but not marry. We'll see. As his company ventures ever farther beyond e-commerce into finance and media, it will run smack into thorny issues like politics. How the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post handles anniversary coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre will show whether Ma's having a fling with the government ... or putting a ring on it.
Indonesia Births Its First Unicorn
Southeast Asia has minted a few startups in the billion- dollar club but Indonesia with a population of more than 250 million is glaringly absent. That should change in 2016 when interest surges in its bustling startup scene and flourishing economy. The smart money's on e-commerce with Tokopedia, backed by Masayoshi Son's SoftBank, as the favorite.
Bitcoin's Creator Finally Steps Forward. For Reals.
In 2014 it was a retired Californian engineer, in 2015 a Sydney businessman. In 2016 some other previously unknown personage will get identified as the mysterious creator of the cryptocurrency, known only by his nom de plume Satoshi Nakamoto. Sleuthing points to a Chinese hacker determined to disrupt currency markets, then a Venezuelan pageant contestant seeking world peace; but our tip is that a Japanese middle-school science teacher -- whose name really is Satoshi Nakamoto -- will step forward to explain he just wanted an easier way to buy Pokemon cards.