For many of the tech industry’s customers, 2020 was a year of triage. Companies were forced to reach for a new digital toolkit to keep the wheels of business turning. Many people got by from home the best they could, their faces buried in screens.
The story of 2021 will be different — provided vaccines are distributed widely and greater human interaction starts to replace the digital.
For tech, this will be a moment of reckoning. Which of the industry’s “pandemic wonders” — companies that were buoyed by the emergency — have real staying power, rather than simply sold a temporary fix for a world in pain? And are the tech industry’s claims of reaching an important inflection point in the shift to a more digital economy valid, or just a Covid-19 mirage?