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Industries most affected by technology


Ramon Murguia Disruption

In 2018, all industries have been affected by technology somehow. However, this article aims to point out the most affected industries, based on the impact that the digital evolution has had in consumers, behaviors, process and transformation. Some of the industries you probably haven't notice how fast you have adopted and evolved as a consumer and already your behavior is changed for good and forever.

Here is a small chart on how technology instead of innovating is disrupting many industries, not only changing the way they worked, but making them compete with other many players they did not consider before.

Ramon Murguia Disrution vs innovation

Taking this principle as a starting point, lets see how some of the most disrupted industries have been affected.

1. Travel.- How many remember going to a travel agent and plan your trip?, today almost everyone looks for their plans in a mobile phone and assess all the places they want to visit, where to eat, review what others opinions are and all in a few clicks. Companies such as Expedia, Travelocity and Kayak disrupted the human travel agents and more, they obligated the airline industry to evolve fast and become digital too, also the rental cars, hotels and many services around hospitality. Creating companies such as Airbnb, hotels.com, trivago, yelp, opentable, rentalcars all these on top of the actual companies already playing in the industry.

2.- Newspapers/Magazines.- The industry have seen their circulation numbers decline steadily. However, more people are informed faster. They have been replaced by online media and blogs, phone videos and moment captured by non reporters. As a matter of fact, computer software are actually today, writing new stories, especially for local news, sporting events results and people are now responsible to spread through social media news faster. Therefore, companies such as Google, Facebook,Twitter on top of CNN, Fox, WSJ, AP, to mention some are digitizing every story. A few years back newspapers use to publish 13 digital news every day, today there are newspapers that are publishing 1,200 news per day. The battle to have the latest info is on.

3.- Retail.- Who does not believe this industry has been disrupted? from retails such as Amazon, Alibaba, ebay, mercadolibre, Asos, Fancy and the list here is endless to some traditional retails that are struggling to gain some share such as Walmart, Macy´s, Target, Costco that they not only against the already new big players, but with new companies such as cornershop, Rappi, Goshare, Deliv, Uber that are fulfilling a service that traditional retails took a long time to deliver.

4.- HeadHunting / Hiring.- Print in newspapers job offers use to be a normal place for a lot of jobs or having a firm that had opportunities for some companies that they did the match. However, today companies such as Linkedin, Indeed, Monster, Jobbatical are displacing the traditional way the industry worked. Print classified ads have also been replaced by the mentioned sites, while site like Craigslist have taken other kind of classified.

5.- Radio stations / Music.- The industry of entertainment in general has been impacted. However, music has gone through so many changes in the past 8 years that the industry will never be the same. Companies such as Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI, BMG they typically had exclusive recording contracts with an artist in return of royalties on price selling of the records. The first impact was with Napster then Apple Music came in and was taken away by Spotify. However, today we have Youtube artists coming out by themselves.

6.- Libraries / Books.- No other industry has grown more in size as the book industry with the appearance of Amazon. But today also libraries and digital books will evolve to new frontiers. Products such as Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony reader are speeding the delivery and minimizing space. Libraries would probably become museums.

7.- Finance.- Stock brokers and advisers have lost some of their business to online trading, websites such as eTrade, Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, roboadvisors are some of the companies that impacted the industry first, then banks needed to evolve. Now Robinhood is a free online brokerage service stealing market share from traditional brokers. Today, many banks are giving the customers the ability to deposit checks via mobile apps. Payment systems like apple pay, Paypal, Samsung pay are some of the competitors that had nothing to do with banks and now are impacting. Moreover, cryptocurrencies and blockchain are some other disruptive developments that will shake further the industry.

8.- Cameras.- Kodak might be the example that everyone uses to make a reference on technology impact. However, there are 3 mayor changes here. From traditional film cameras, to digital cameras where HP, Sony, Dell, Samsung, Lumix, are some of the brands that destroyed Kodak and Fuji. But at the same time, those digital cameras where eliminated by Apple, Samsung and the overall mobile industry. Today, Canon and Nikon are struggling to survive becoming a niche and professional products, but for how long?. Moreover, printing pictures use to have many retail shops for that, Costco is still one that survived, but that has changed, because today many have printers in their home and more important Facebook and Instagram changed the way we store memories.

9.- Television.- Traditional broadcasting and main TV companies such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Televisa, BBC to Netflix, Hulu, Roku, HBOGo, Youtube, are some of the companies that are transforming the industry and making consumers stay more hours sitting in front of a device (not longer TV) consuming their entertaining.

10.- Others.- From transportation with companies such as Uber, Waze, Google maps, Cabify, Lyft, to postal service impact by the email, Drones, insurance and many others that we will review in another article.

As you can see, the impact of technology has been massive and we have not even notice it. Because all these companies have came to satisfy through technology the needs we had in a easier and painless way.

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