#10A – A review of the past decade in tech, the 2010s, and its impact on the world we live in

We split this episode into two parts: in this, the first part (10A), we argue the 2010 decade actually started with the 2008 crisis, the advent of the iPhone, the App Store and the move of the world to the cloud. We go in-depth into the macro-trends of the decade and the underlying technological tectonic shifts, including analyses of the OS, platform and product & application spaces.  Look out for the second part of this episode (10B), where we will discuss the shifts in business models and the funding landscape that happened in the 2010s. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - When did the 2010s really start? (02:24) Section 2 - The Backdrop: Macro-trends and overall context (03:41) Section 3 - The Tech Stack: Operating Systems, Devices & Platforms (19:09) Section 4 - Products & Applications (38:18) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.  Subscribe To Our Podcast Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors Intro (01:24) Bertrand: Hi Nuno, how are you today? Nuno: I'm well and you Bertrand, how are you? Bertrand: I'm doing good. I'm doing good, enjoying shelter in place.  In today's episode we're going to discuss, the 2010s, the past decade. A lot happened in that past decade in tech. So it will be a pretty, pretty high density episode. We will talk first about a more higher level, macro view of what has been happening in tech. We will deep dive into the underlying of the technology industry, operating systems, devices, technologies, platforms, and then we will talk about the dramatic changes we also saw in business models. It's actually pretty amazing when we think about everything that changed there. It's not just the technology. And finally, we will conclude around the switch in funding landscape and how much has changed as well. We will be splitting this episode in two. So that it's more digestible.  Section 1 - When did the 2010s really start? So Nuno, I will start with a question. When can we say that the 2010s really started? Nuno:  Well in my opinion, the 2010s start with the 2008 crisis that prolonged itself well into 2009 and to the beginning of the 2010s. And in some ways that's a really good timing to choose because 2008 was also the year in which the Apple app store launched for the iPhone. It's also the year where, in effect, Android became a real threat to iOS and Apple, and it really defined a lot of what was going to come into 2010s so we start with a crisis, as we'll see, we might end with a crisis as well, which will be interesting. So maybe decades actually do get defined by crisis, but for the purposes of this episode, we will go back a little bit in 2007, 2008 to give us more context into what the decade really looked like. Bertrand: Yes, it's might be sad to start and end with crisis, but at least it's pretty clearcut, and crises definitely generate very strong inflection points.  Nuno: And  we had the 2000/2001 already with the bubble. So  in effect, beware of  end of decades. Bertrand: Indeed, indeed. If we make a full comparison, the decades themselves are pretty good. It's the ending and the starting. Section 2 - The backdrop: Macro-trends and overall context   So let's talk about the more macro trends that we saw in tech. And I feel the first big macro trend was really how in the 2010s, technology started to insert itself right in the middle of society, in the middle of us. It has been pretty amazing, to see technology scope, enlarging, growing  into our daily interactions. Nuno, what's your perspective on that? Nuno: Yes. If we talk about IT or tech in some ways, we sometimes use them interchangeably. Tech is definitely in the middle of all society. We all use different technologies. Software based technologies, Internet based technologies, mobile based technologies, and the 2010s were really the years where these changes happened most dramatically. Where to your point, technology definitely got in the midst of us. Everyone uses today, smartphones, everyone uses today the Internet. And that was not a given in 2008, 2009, as we said, the beginning of our journey into the 2010s. But today it is true. So definitely a huge shift in this decade. I would say a real significant emergence of technology around the world in developed markets and emerging markets alike. Bertrand: Yes, for me, what's been amazing is as you say, it's not just developed markets, but also developing economies, where technology has been more and more important, more and more visible, and you could argue more and more transformational for people's life. As much as our life has changed in the US, in Asia, in Europe,  life thanks to technology has probably changed even more in developing markets. You suddenly move from no smartphone, no Internet, maybe sometimes a feature phone, to suddenly discovering the Internet. There has been no PC or Mac or laptop,  stop gap like we had during the 90s or 2000s, it was suddenly move to discovering, the Internet and all its connected services. And we'll talk more about some of the ways that technology inserted itself. But it's pretty exciting to see how our daily life has been changed from, ordering taxis, ordering food.  We could talk about the digitalization of society at large. Who remembers  using a paper plane ticket, for instance, we have all gladly transformed to using our phone for that,  in the past decade  where we could still travel. So it's really for me, that part that has been exciting and we already talked in a previous episode how, COVID is a big impact. So I think that digitalization of societies that really happened in 2010s is only going to accelerate,  in a way, thanks to COVID.   Nuno: Yes. And with effectively a new decade with a tremendous shift towards technology, we see the emergence of winners and new players that dominate the market. There's always these classic charts on who's the largest market cap in the world, and it's very interesting in how they changed through the years. And obviously if we look at what happened in the last decade, we see really the emergence of companies that were somehow a little bit significant already, but not definitely as significant as they are right now. And we obviously talk about Apple, which obviously with the iPhone became a significant player in the late 2000s and then 2010s.  Google, that was already very significant player. That only became a  stronger player in particular with Android and YouTube becoming of age. Amazon becoming a household name to all of us, and a dominant force in e-commerce, but also in infrastructure, which we'll talk about in a second, and Facebook becoming the real win around social. We obviously can't forget Microsoft, which had its resuscitation in some ways and found its groove again in particular in the late 2010s.  But obviously, you know these five big, I would be very specific about it, these five big Western dominant players really leading the world in terms of market cap and really showing us how, how much tech has taken over the world and eaten the world in some ways. Bertrand: Yes, you  to highlight Nuno, that it's really the Western players, but in Asia there are some very strong players in that space. We can talk about a Rakuten in Japan, we can talk about an Alibaba and a Tencent in China, and some new players like Xiaomi as well during that period in China. So indeed, it's an emergence of some very strong players, that are scaling from devices, to cloud computing, to web to mobile, to IT infrastructure,  whose scope of operations,  have really grown in the past 10 years.  Some of them were pretty specialized players. Take a Google, much more specialized in search, at the time and you could argue they still monetize very well search. But it is a much bigger and very different company today. Facebook, multiple acquisitions, well done, actually. Acquisitions over the past 10 years,   they have you could argue an amazing track record. Some would say "too" amazing track record in acquisition.  But we cannot, not acknowledge this.  And talking about the Asian players, I think there's one theme, is that there's has been the emergence of China as a tech superpower and overall global superpower. But if we focus on tech for a moment, it's clear that 10 years ago in the eyes of many, China in term of business model had a focus on serving Chinese market and in many ways of copying more what was existing in the West in term of business model. And I think it's fair to say is that China is emerging the 2010s some of the biggest tech giants of the world. With giants, who are not just focus on the China markets, but are now global giants themselves. And these very large Chinese players, like in the West, are not just focusing anymore, on one region or one product. They've really become companies that span across products and that ultimately have actually created new business models. We keep talking about Tencent, with WeChat that has built an app that is bigger than some other apps, the super app. We have seen, the fastest penetration of e-commerce and payments in China, that the world has ever seen.  And China is now leading the way in e-commerce, in digital payments. That might come as a surprise  to some. So China, Asia, definitely, in a very different place than it was.  Unfortunately, sadly, so for Europe we cannot say that there has been, there's similar level of transformation. I think there has been a positive transformation,...