From Zoom to Quibi, the tech winners and losers of 2020

We streamed, we Zoomed, we ordered groceries and houseplants online, we created virtual villages while navigating laptop shortages to work and learn from home. When it comes to technology, 2020 was a year like no other.

Here are the year's tech winners and losers:

Virtual reality. As the world adjusted to a new stuck-at-home reality, the pandemic could have been virtual reality’s chance to offer an escape. With the use of special headsets and accoutrements such as gloves, the technology lets people interact with a 360-degree view of a three-dimensional environment, seemingly a good fit for people stuck indoors. But people turned to easier-to-use software and games that they already had. Few rushed to spend hundreds of dollars on a clunky new headset or tried to learn the ropes of virtual reality meeting software. And no VR games broke into the mainstream.

Social media election labels. It was the year of labels on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even TikTok. Ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, the companies promised to clamp down on election misinformation, including baseless accusations of fraud and candidates’ premature declarations of victory. And the most visible part of this was the bevy of labels applied to tweets, posts, photos, and videos.

“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” read one typical label applied to a tweet by President Donald Trump.

But many experts said that although the labels made it appear that the companies were taking action, ”at the end of the day it proved to be pretty ineffective,” as Jennifer Grygiel, a professor at Syracuse University and social media expert, put it.

Quibi. Less than a year ago, Quibi launched a splashy Super Bowl ad that posed the question, “What’s a Quibi?” People may still be scratching their heads. Quibi, short for “quick bites,” raised $1.75 billion from investors including major Hollywood players Disney, NBCUniversal, and Viacom. But the service struggled to reach viewers, as short videos abound on the internet and the coronavirus pandemic kept many people at home. It announced it was shutting down in October, just months after its April launch.

Uber and Lyft. Fresh off their initial public offerings the year before and still struggling to show they can be profitable, the ride-hailing services were clobbered by the pandemic in 2020, as people stopped taking cars and huddled down at home. In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people, or about 14% of its workforce. Lyft also announced job cuts.

But after significantly reducing costs by restructuring in the second quarter, Lyft said last month it expects to have its first profitable quarter at the end of 2021. And the companies scored a major victory in California, where voters granted them and others an exception to a law that sought to classify their drivers as employees, an expense that analysts thought would have pummeled their business in the nation’s most populous state.

U.S. TikTok ban. While India outlawed the popular video-sharing app, TikTok appears close to riding out Donald Trump’s term without the president succeeding to ban it here. Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked a potential ban. It was the latest legal defeat for the administration in its efforts to wrest the app from its Chinese owners.

While President-elect Joe Biden has said TikTok is a concern, it’s not clear what his administration will do.

Nintendo Switch. Even in a year heralding splashy new consoles from Xbox and PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch was the console that could. Launched in 2017, the Switch became a fast seller this year as people searched for ways to be entertained at home. Boosting its popularity was the release of island simulation game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which debuted March 20 and has now sold a cumulative 26 million units globally, according to Nintendo.

Zoom. All videoconferencing software from Microsoft Teams to WebEx thrived during the abrupt shift of tens of millions of people to remote working and schooling during the pandemic. But only one became a verb.

Zoom Video Communications was a relatively unheralded company before the pandemic hit, but its ease of use led to wide adoption during the pandemic. There were some growing pains, including lax security that led to “Zoom bombing” breaches early on. The company revamped its security and remains one of the popular platforms to host remote meetings and classes.

Ransomware purveyors. The ransomware scourge — in which criminals hold data hostage by scrambling it until victims pay up — reached epic dimensions in 2020, dovetailing terribly with the COVID-19 plague.

In the U.S., the number of attacks on health-care facilities was on track to nearly double from 50 in 2019. Attacks on state and local governments were up about 50% to more than 150. Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft estimates the cost of ransomware attacks in the U.S. alone last year at more than $9 billion between ransoms paid and downtime/recovery.

PC makers. After beginning the year with supply-chain delays, the personal computer industry found itself scrambling to keep up with surging demand for machines that became indispensable to millions of workers and students at home.

The outbreak initially stymied production because PC makers weren’t able to get the parts they needed from shutdown overseas factories. Those closures contributed to a steep decline in sales during the first three months of the year. But it has been boom times ever since. In July-September, PC shipments in the U.S. surged 11% from the same time in 2019 — the industry’s biggest quarterly sales increase in a decade, according to the research firm Gartner.

E-commerce. The biggest of the bunch, Amazon, is one of the few companies that has thrived during the coronavirus outbreak. People have ordered groceries, supplies, and other items online, helping the company bring in record revenue and profits between April and June. That came even though it had to spend $4 billion on cleaning supplies and pay workers overtime and bonuses.

But it’s not just Amazon. The pandemic is accelerating the move to online shopping, a trend experts expect to continue even after vaccines allow the world to resume normal activities.

Big Tech. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google did well financially, with each company’s stock price and profit up considerably since the start of the year. They gained users, rolled out new products and features, and kept on hiring even as other companies and industries faced significant cuts.

But regulators have been scrutinizing the companies, and that’s unlikely to ease up in 2021. Google faces an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice. And Facebook has been hit by one from the Federal Trade Commission, along with nearly every U.S. state that seeks to split it off from WhatsApp and Instagram.

More cases could follow. Congressional investigators spent months digging into the actions of Apple and Amazon in addition to Facebook and Google.