(Appeared in the Education Times Column of Times of India (Bangalore Edition) on January 5, 2008)
General
· Barack Obama getting elected as the first African-American President on November 4, 2008 and his first speech cheered the whole world.
· Chinese demonstrated their extra-ordinary skills in project execution by hosting Summer Olympics 2008 in Beijing and by winning the largest number of medals in the Games; India created a record of winning the first-ever Gold for individual sport, thanks to Abhinav Bindra
· ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) made India proud by putting Chadrayaan (lunar vehicle) into space on October 22, 2008 and successfully putting MIP (Moon Impact Probe) on to the Moon soil (with Indian tri-color painting on it) on November 14, 2008; they also put ten satellites into orbit in quick succession within tem minutes using an India-made launch vehicle PSLV on August 25, 2008.
· Tate Nano (the $ 2,500 people’s car) that was showcased to the world on January 10, 2008 grabbed global headlines. Singur in West Bengal unfortunately could not house the plant that was set to roll out Tate Nano in 2008, thanks to petty politics; Tate Nano will roll out of Sanand in Gujarat.
· Terror strike takes a heavy toll on India in the year 2008; Bombay terror attack on the “iconic” Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay on November 26, 2008 (India’s 9/11) and its scar will take years to disappear. This year saw terror attacks in Jaipur (13th May), Bangalore (25th July), Hyderabad (26th July), Delhi (13th September).
· Major tragedies strike India in 2008; Kosi flood in Bihar (13th to 27th September) affects millions; Himachal Naina Devi temple tragedy (2nd August), Jodhpur temple tragedy (30th September)
· Chinese earthquake in May, Myanmar cyclone in October, and blasts in Pakistan in October impacted many in the world
· Tripura, Meghalaya & Nagaland in March, Karnataka in May, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram & Jammu-Kashmir get newly elected State Governments in 2008.
· Left parties withdrawing support to Manmohan Singh-led Government, and the support extended by Samajwadi Party made the Government very weak
· Inflation going past 12% in June 2008 hurts the common man most; luckily, it started climbing down by the end of the year.
· Rupee that was at Rs 47 / USD appreciated to Rs 38 /USD in before crashing to Rs 50 / USD by the year-end.
· Tatas did India proud by acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford in May
· Reliance starts pumping oil from Godavari basin and expect to get about 16% of India’s oil needs
· NASA Phoenix lands on Mars surface on June 1, 2008
· Private sector built green-field airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad started operations on 23rd March and 23rd May respectively.
· 123 Agreement (Nuclear Agreement) was signed by USA and India on October 10, 2008
· Central Government notifies the Sixth Pay Commission; the salary differentials between private sector and the government to reduce substantially; salaries for academic staff to increase dramatically.
· The “Sub-prime” crisis in the housing sector in the United States causes a global financial tsunami in November 2008 that is set to impact all the countries (including India); US Government nationalizes Freddie and Fannie, bails out AIG and Meryl Lynch; Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy; the three US auto majors get bailout; Toyota set to declare losses the first time ever in 71 years. USA talks of 750,000 job losses in the year. Indian IT industry too will be affected, though it is too early to assess the impact
· Oil prices that started at $ 60 per barrel in January shoot up to $ 143 in November before crashing to $ 37 in December
Products
· Apple launching iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008 in USA (and August 22, 2008 in India) brought 3G and “Touch” to mart phones in a big way. Blackberry launches “Bold” in September and “Storm” in November; Nokia launches N96 in August, 5800 in October, N97 in November; Samsung launches Innov8 in November and Omnia in December; Sony Ericsson launches Experia in November; Palm launches Centro & Treo 800W; Apple and Blackberry push Palm way down – 8% by year end from 36% earlier) in smart phone sales.
· Ultra-thin notebook computers saw action along with low-cost “Netbooks” (small footprint, low power consumption and less expensive notebooks). Apple launched MacBook Air in January; Lenovo launched x300 in May
· Netbooks enter mainstream; sell more numbers than Apple iPhone; Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire dominate
· Firefox 3 browser was launched on June 17, 2008; creates history with record downloads within a week
· Intel “Atom” processor (that consumes very low power) enters “Netbook” market and targets mobile users (including smart phones)
· Intel also announces next generation Core i7 processors; Intel engineers do India proud by designing an energy efficient processor for Xeon server
· Google enters mobile phone space by announcing G1 on October 22, 2008 (based on Android operating system); it also launches “Chrome” browser in September
· NVidia launches “Telsa” personal super computer in India
· Titan launches Braille watches for blind at Rs 995 along with National Association for Blind in November
· Microsoft launches Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 in May; also beta versions of Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Azure (cloud computing product); their “Silverlight” platform to counter Adobe Flash during Chinese Olympics gains traction
· DTH (Direct To Home) started gaining momentum with Reliance and Airtel announcing their products during Dasara and Deepavali season respectively (October and November)
Marketplace
· Japanese Daiichi Sankyo acquiring Indian pharma major Ranbaxy for $ 4.6 billion was indeed a big ticket acquisition; Infosys bid to acquire UK-based SAP practice company Axon was nullified by HCL Tech putting a bid for a higher price and winning it for $ 753 million; other acquisitions include Mindtree acquiring Aztec Software, Birla-owned IDEA acquiring the first Indian mobile service provider Spice for Rs 2,720 Crores and Times acquiring job portal “DICE” from Cyber Media. Swan Telecom and Unitech selling off within months of taking GSM license smacks of corruption.
· Globally, IT leader HP acquired EDS for $ 13.9 billion; Oracle acquired BEA for $ 8.5 billion. Verizon acquired Alltel for a whopping $ 28.1 billion; Microsoft bid to acquire Yahoo fails; JDA acquired Supply Chain software vendor i2 for $ 346 million; McAfee acquired Secure Computing for $ 465 million.
· HP annual turnover crosses $118.4 billion as of October 31, 2008 a record by any IT company (including IBM)
Technology
· HP researchers discover the 4th circuit element (after Resistor, Conductor and Capacitor)
· MIT researchers demonstrate “wireless” electricity (may change power charging for mobile devices), “raw solar” (will help wider adoption of solar energy) and thermoelectric cooling (might help data centers)
· HP and QualComm announce “Gobi” chip for mobile phones
· Blue-ray wins the standard war in DVD storage format
· Lenovo and Apple launch super slim laptop products using advanced technology
· Sony announces “TransferJet” with speeds of up to 375 Mbps
· Zephyr solar plane clocks more than 83 hours of unmanned flying
Indian IT companies
Indian IT companies top the IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) list of Top 10 global outsourcing companies with Infosys (3rd), TCS (6th), Wipro (7th), Genpact (9th) and Tech Mahindra (10th) in the fray
Indian IT services revenue touches $ 52 billion by March 2008 (NASSCOM); IT services (including ITES) generate 1.6 million jobs; Karnataka benefits with IT /ITES jobs exceeding 500,000 (STPI November 200 
Infosys headcount touches 100,000; gets included in “Global Dow” – 150 most innovative global companies
Wipro enters African markets by starting office in Morocco and Ethiopia
HCL acquires Axon for $ 753 million
Airtel (India;s largest mobile service provider) reaches subscriber base of 83 million by November
WNS gets $ 1 billion (over 10 years) contract from Aviva
Reputation Institute in USA puts Tatas in the 6th position (out of Top 200) globally
TCS starts 1,000 seat facility in Ohio, USA
3i-Infotech turnover crosses Rs 1,000 Crores in 2008
MNC companies in India
· Nokia rolls out its 200 millionth handset out of Sriperumbudur plant (near Chennai) in India
· Motorola plant commences production in April in Sriperumbudur (near Chennai)
· Dell laptops roll out of Chennai factory
· CSC talks of doubling India count from 16,000 to 32,000 (before meltdown)
· Chicago-based Agile software major “Thought Works”, expands in India
· Virtualization major VmWare expands India operations
· Fab-less semiconductor major ARM expand India operations
· Yahoo Labs start in Bangalore
· Juniper Networks increases headcount in India significantly
· Sutherland talks of 10,000 seat BPO in Chennai
· Semiconductor major (earlier part of Motorola) FreeScale
expands India operations
· French IT services major Steria has big plans for India
· Citix to invest $ 200 million,
· Intel 6-core energy efficient Xeon processor for servers is designed in India
· Hyundai starts second car plant in Chennai
Telecom
· Policy muddle in 3G and WiMax licenses, controversy surrounding the sale of Swan & Unitech Telecom stall India’s telecom growth story
· Mobile phone subscriber base to cross 380 million by Dec 31, 2008 (it stood at 374.13 million as of Nov 30, 2008 with monthly additions exceeding 10 million as per TRAI)
· IP telephony becomes legal from August 2008
· Japanese telecom giant DoCoMo enters India thru Tate Telecom
· India’s first 3G phone rings on December 13, 2008 thru MTNL
Education & Research
· Six new IIT’s start at Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad
· Indian Institute of Science celebrates the century year starting May 27, 2008
· Supreme Court upholds OBC reservation excluding “creamy layer”
· ACM Infosys Foundation Award for computer science takes off – Prof Daphne Koller is the first recipient
· Indian Science & Engineering research Council (on the lines of NSF in USA) gets Parliamentary approval in December
· Government starts 100,000 scholarships for outstanding high school graduates; SBI launches 100,000 merit-cum-means scholarships
Applications
· Reserve Bank of India announces “mobile banking” guidelines
· Airlines shift to 100% e-ticketing from June 1, 2008
· Hughes to provide Internet connectivity across trains using their satellite network
· Electricity Exchange take off in 2008
Infrastructure
· Airtel laying US Japan cable
People
· Barack Obama is the next US President
· Bill Gates steps down from full time Chairman position in Microsoft; Yahoo Founder Chairman Jerry Yang retires
· Nepal monarchy is gone; get its first President, Parliament and a new Prime Minister
· Pakistan gets a new President and a Prime Minister; democracy returns
· IIT Kanpur educated Dr Subba Rao is the new Governor of Reserve Bank of India
· Chandu Bhave is the new SEBI Chairman
· India-born Lakshmi Mittal-controlled Arcelor Mittel has annual revenue exceeding $ 100 billion in 2008
· Bharti Mittal of Airtel joins ITU Board (the first for any Indian)
· Kiran Karnick gives charge of NASSCOM President-ship to Som Mittal
· Former Prime Minister VP Singh, spiritual guru Maharshi Mahesh Yogi and social worker Baba Amte pass away
Visitors to India in 2008 include
· Prime Ministers of UK, Turkey, Nepal, French President, Syrian President and Prince Andrew
· CEOs of IT companies (ARM, FreeScale, Microsoft and RIM), FMCG majors (Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and Unilever), automation major Schneider and defence electronics major Thales
· Rupert Murdoch
· Presidents of Cambridge University, Oxford University, UC Berkeley and Purdue University
· Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus
· Presidents of Royal Society, UK and IEEE Computer Society, USA
Interesting numbers
· India’s student population in USA in 2008-09 (94,000)
· Anil Ambani Power IPO subscribed 173 times (Rs 11,760 Crores)
· Foreign Exchange reserves start at $ 240 billion, surge to $ 343 billion, crash to $ 240 billion and rise to $ 250 billion)
· World lost $ 10 trillion in year 2008 stock market crash (the biggest ever)
· SWITCH (Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCSm Cognizant and HCL) holds 2.4% of global IT outsourcing ($ 667 billion)
· India’s GSM mobile subscriber base crossed 200 million; overall mobile subscribers crossed 300 million in March and 385 million in December
