That was IT in the Year 2011

IT in 2011

General

 

• Union Budget 2011 ends the 17-year old tax holiday (Sec 10 A & 10 B) for software industry
• Wikipedia celebrated 10th Anniversary on January 15, 2011
• “App” is the top word of 2010 (announced on January 6, 2011 by American Dialect Society)
• Bangalore Metro starts rolling on October 20, 2011
• India wins World Cup on April 2, 2011
• Smaller coins (less than 50 paise) become history on June 30, 2011
• Anti corruption crusade led by Anna Hazare takes centre stage; former Telecom Minister Raja and sitting Member of the Parliament Kanimozhi are arrested: Telecom Minister Maran is forced to resign: Parliament passes Lokpal bill on December 27, 2011 but Anna Hazare unimpressed
• Telengana issue paralyses life in Andhra Pradesh on and off in 2011
• China replaces Japan as the world’s No 2 economy in 2011
• S&P downgrades US sovereign rating from AAA to AA+ on August 5, 2011
• Egypt, Yemen, Sudan erupt; South Sudan is born
• Osama Bill Laden was killed on May 2, 2011; Libyan leader Gadaffi killed on October 9, 2011
• Japan suffers earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear disaster on March 18, 2011

 

Technology

 

• IBM researchers talk of “Graphene-based” computers that can be 30 times faster than silicon-based machines
• UC Berkeley team led by Jeffrey Baker talks of “magnetic” computers in July 2011
• Intel unveils 3D chips in May 2011 and solar powered chips in August 2011
• IBM India showcases solar-powered data Center
• Internet almost ran out of IPv4 addresses in 2011
• India to shift to Digital TV by 2015

 

Products

 

• WWW turns 20 on August 4, 2011
• IBM PC turned 30 on August 12, 2011
• Apple launched
  • IPad 2 on March 2, 2011
  • new iMac on May 3, 2011
  • ICloud, iOS 5 and Mac OS 10 on June 6, 2011
  • iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011
  • Apple iPad arrives in India on Jan 27, 2011 (after 9 months); iPhone 4 on May 27, 2011 (after 7 months); iPhone 4S on November 25, 2011 (within 2 months of US Launch)
  • Nokia and Microsoft announce Windows Mobile powered mobile phones in February (after Nokia decides to phase out Symbian); Nokia made Windows Mobile-powered Lumia 800 and 710 phones reach the market in December
  • There was a flurry of Tablet launches
    • BlackBerry Tablet Playbook on April 19, 2011
    • Samsung 10″ Tablet on July 20, 2011;
    • Amazon Fire priced at $ 199 on September 28, 2011
    • India-made Tablets from HCL, Airtel, Reliance and the low cost (Rs 2,000) “Akash” on October 28, 2011
    • Google launches Music Beta in April, Google+ on July 6, 2011
    • HP announces Veer phone, TouchPad Tablet and scraps them later all within months!
    • TCS announces ON cloud-based offering for SME sector
    • Nokia launches dual SIM Phone 100 in India
    • Sabeer Bhatia launches “Jaxtr free SMS” on November 22, 2011

 

Markets

 

• TCS is the most valued company on December 31, 2011; Coal India is the most valued company on August 17, 2011 going past Reliance & ONGC
• British Petroleum and Reliance $ 7.2 billion deal got completed on August 30, 2011
• Stock markets everywhere saw severe beating in 2011; Sensex tumbled to record low in 2 years.
• Rupee touched 53 against USD in November 2011
• IBM market capitalization goes past Microsoft on May 24, 2011
• Apple with $ 337 billion goes past $ 331 billion market capitalization of Exxon on August 10,2011; Apple beats Google to become most valued brand on May 9, 2011 (BrandZ)
• In M & A (Mergers & Acquisitions) in the Indian market include

 

• Essar selling 33% stake to Vodafone for $ 5 billion on March 31, 2011
• Synopsys buying “Magma Automation” for $ 507 million on December 1, 2011
• Indian BPO major Genpact buying “Headstrong” for $500 million on April 6, 2011
• Infosys acquiring Australian BPO on December 20, 2011
• CSC acquires AppLabs on Sept 14,2011
• iGate acquires Patni computers in January 2011
• Pearson acquires TutorVista in January 2011

 

Globally

 

• AT&T decides to buy “T-Mobile” for $ 39 billion in March 2011 but drops the plan in December 2011
• Google acquires “Motorola Mobility” for $ 12.5 billion on August 14, 2011
• HP acquires UK-based unstructured data company “Autonomy” for $11.5 billion August 18, 2011
• Microsoft acquires “Skype” for $ 8.5 billion in 2011
• Texas Instruments buys “National Semiconductors” for $ 6.5 billion on April 1, 2011
• SAP buys ‘Success Factors” for $ 3.4 billion on Dec 4, 2011
• Ericsson acquires Telcordia for $ 1.15 billion on June 14, 2011
• Ericsson sells its part of Sony Ericsson to Sony for $ 1.15 billion

 

 

 

Indian IT companies

 

• Tech-Mahindra joins the billion-dollar club in April 2011
• TCS wins $ 2.2 billion (over 15 years) contract from UK-based Friends Life Insurance company in October 2011
• Essar BPO Aegis gets $ 2 billion contract (over 8 years) from Saudi Telecom
• Cades gets $ 300 million order from Airbus in April 2011
• SoftBank to invest $ 200million in mobile Ad company “inMobi” (started by youngsters from IIT Kanpur)
• Airtel has 50 million customers in Africa by December 2011

 

MNC companies in India

 

• IBM celebrates its centenary on June 16, 2011; decides to offer 1,000 ESOPs to all it’s Indian employees; starts operations in Doon, Gandhinagar & Raipur taking its presence in India to 18 cities
• The largest computer firm HP goes thru a turmoil; CEO Apotheker visits India in January 2011; announces scrapping TouchPad tablet and quitting PC business in August; gets fired; the new CEO Whitman reverses the decision to quit PC business in October
• Accenture has 70,000 of its 2,15,000 global employees in India
• Microsoft opens second development facility in Bangalore in December 2011
• Honeywell starts Hyderabad operations in January 2011
• Samsung expects $ 5 billion from India operations in 2011; Dell expects $ 2 billion
• Nokia plant in Chennai crossed 500 million handset production; Samsung triples handset production out of India
• GE talks of Rs 1,000 crores investment in India
• Daimler to double investment in India
• Nokia Siemens expands delivery Center in Chennai with increased head count from 120 to 1,000
• Carl Zeiss opens R & D Center in Bangalore
• Toshiba invests Rs 450 crores in India
• SanDisk ramps up India operations in 2011
• Huawei plans $150 million expansion of its India operations
• 3 M invests Rs 100 crores in Bangalore R & D Center
• Zynga increased R & D head count in India
• Hitachi opened its R & D centre in Bangalore on October 13, 2011
• LinkedIn opened its R & D facility in Bangalore on November 16, 2011

 

 

Applications

 

• Indian companies permitted to use video conferencing for AGM
• EPFO (Employees Provident Fund Office) goes online in July 2011
• Karnataka voter ID process goes online on October 1, 2011; Chief Minister office is open for video viewing on November 30, 2011
• Mobile banking and mobile trading started in India in 2011; Reserve Bank eases cap on mobile transactions beyond Rs 50,000 in December 2011
• State Bank starts “Unhappy” SMS message to address customer complaints
• Amazon allows Kindle readers to borrow eBooks from 11,000 public libraries

 

Education & Research

 

• IIIT Bangalore and IIT Bombay bring WWW Conference to India for the first time in 20 years; held in Hyderabad during March 28 – April 1, 2011
• Infosys Science Prizeswere announced November 16, 2011; the winners are
  • Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur – Engineering Sciences
  • Dr. Imran Siddiqi of CCMB, Hyderabad – Life Sciences
  • Prof. Kannan Soundararajan of Stanford University, USA – Mathematical Sciences
  • Prof. Sriram Ramaswamy of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - Physical Sciences
  • Prof. Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago, USA – Social Sciences (Economics)
  • Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi – Social Sciences (Political Science & International Relations)
  • Nobel prizesfor the year 2011 announced in October 2011; the winners are
    • Saul Perlmutter of Univ. Of California, Berkeley, USA, Brian Schmidt of Australian National University and Adam Reiss of Johns Hopkins University, USA  – Physics
    • Dan Shectman of Technion, Israel  – Chemistry
    • Bruce Beautler of Univ. of Texas, USA, Jules Hoffman of French National Academy of Sciences and Ralph Steinman of Rockefeller University (who unfortunately died before the announcement could reach him) – Medicine
    • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf & Leymah Gbowee both residents of Liberia and Tawakkal Karman of Yemen in Africa – Peace
    • Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer – Literature
    • Thomas Sargent of New York University, USA and Christopher Sims of Princeton University, USA – Economics
    • CSIR announced Bhatnagar prize winners on September 26, 2011; the winners are
      • Amit Sharma of ICGEB, New Delhi and Rajan Sankaranarayanan of CCMB, Hyderabad  – Biological Sciences
      • Balasubramanian Sundaram ofJNCAR, Bangalore and G N Sastry of IICT, Hyderabad  – Chemical Sciences
      • Shanker Doraiswamy of NIO, Goa  – Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean & Planetary Sciences
      • Sirshendu De of IIT Kharagpur and Upadrasta Ramamurthy of IISc, Bangalore  – Engineering Sciences
      • Mahan Maharaj of RMV University, Kolkata and Palash Sarkar of ISI, Kolkata – Mathematical Sciences
      • K N Balaji of IISc Bangalore  – Medical Sciences
      • Shiraz Minwalla of TIFR, Mumbai  – Physical Sciences

 

People

 

• Infosys Founder Chairman N R Narayana Murthy makes way for K V Kamath as the new Chairman on turning 65 on August 20, 2011
• Srinivasa Ramanujan’s 125th Birthday celebrated on December 22, 2011 with the Prime Minister declaring December 22 as “Mathematics Day” and the year 2012 as the “Year of Mathematics”
• Steve Jobs is the Man of the Year 2011
• IBM names Virginia Rometty as CEO effective January 1, 2012
• Former US President Bush, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor, New Zealand PM, Slovenian PM, Vietnamese President, Afghan President visit India in 2011
• India-born Nobel Laureate Venky Ramakrishnan, Apple Founder Steve Wozniak, Investor Warren Buffet, HP CEO Leo Apotheker, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Cisco CEO John Chambers and CEO’s
• Apple founder Steve Jobs, Bharat Ratna award winner Bhimsen Joshi, CD pioneer of Sony Ohga , c language inventor Dennis Ritchie, Artificial Intelligence pioneer John McCarthy, India-born Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana died in 2011

 

Interesting numbers

 

• Indian IT industry expected to hire 225,000 people in 2011
• SBI launched 25,000^th ATM on March 31, 2011
• India’s total telephone subscribers stood at 914.6 million (881.4 million mobile subscribers) as of October 31, 2011
• Indian mobile handsets sales stood at 213 million in 2011 (231 million in 2012 projected)
• Indian Internet population touches 101 million in December 2011
• Rupee stood at 51.79 on Nov 30, 2011
• Forex at $ 307 billion on Dec 2, 2011
• Mobile game “Angry Birds” saw 500 million downloads in 2011
• Apple iPhone 4S sold 4 million over the weekend of launch
• Facebook had 750 million subscribers on July 6, 2011
• Every week 100 movies, 250 books and 15,000 Mobile Apps get released! (543 each day for Android and 745 for iOS)
• Percentage of Poor in India dropped from 37% to 32% over 2005 to 2011
• World population touched 7 billion on October 31, 2011 (6 billion in 1999, 5 billion in 1987, 4 billion in 1974, 3 billion in 1959, 2 billion in 1927 and 1 billion in 1805)

 

Professor Sowmyanarayanan Sadagopan is the Director of IIIT-Bangalore. These are his personal views. He can be reached at ss@iiitb.ac.in

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