The Effects of Coronavirus on Technology Industry

In recent months, coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread in many countries around the world. The COVID-19 outbreak also affected various businesses, markets, and industries experiencing severe challenges. First, this pandemic reported from the significant industrial hub of Wuhan, China. Then the impacts of COVID-19 extended to other urgent industrial centers, supply chains, and economies of different countries. Thus, in current situations of a pandemic outbreak, it is more crucial to take significant steps by industrial companies that reduce the risks and also provide practical plans to deal with COVID-19 consequences. Such programs may include creating specialist teams that follow systematic actions (e.g., studying, identifying, evaluating, and managing various issues due to COVID-19 reflections). Moreover, many technology and industrial companies closed their branches, banned, or limited their staff activities in the infected areas.

In addition, there was a potential impact on different technology sectors. For instance, in Hardware/Software fields, the current market constraints affected the launch of the next versions of smartphones, and the customers may postpone replacing their mobile devices. Some companies facing severe challenges to reach the full levels of production unpredicted the supply chains and components shortage. Many organizations relied on remote-work technology; therefore, there will be increased demands on security software to protect Virtual Private Networks, Cloud-based systems, Database management systems, and endpoints. For the hardware industries, it is expected there will be high demands on laptops, mobility equipment due to remote and online works.

In information technology services, some researchers estimated significant demand for expert software and cloud-based services. Also, researchers expect escalated demand on various communication services and devices, where the majority of universities transferred to online education, and many organizations relied on remote working. There will be a significant role for IT departments, in which to support different organizations, provide IT devices, secure the networks, offer recovery systems, and maintain IT security solutions. The demand for high-speed data transmission leads to adopt high quality of network devices and reliable communication systems and move to 5G network technology. Furthermore, this crisis affected supplies of raw materials (e.g., chemicals, aluminum, and copper) used in the manufacturing of semiconductors.

The companies and organizations should enhance their resources, create parts banks to avoid delays in the delivery of critical materials and components. Different companies should take some steps such as review the cybersecurity procedures, implement multi-levels authentication for network access, protect mobile devices and laptops with encryption techniques, and provide suitable access control and physical security for IT management systems.