In 2015, technology paused for breath

Technology develops at two speeds.

Much of the time it moves at a smooth pace. We see a constant stream of small, incremental updates, bug fixes and minor changes. Software version numbers tick over by decimal point or less.

Now and then we see a great leap forward. A new device, app or service emerges almost from nowhere.

Everything changes

Great leaps change everything. They destroy old categories and create new ones. Think iPhone, Google search, tablets or Amazon Web Services. This, it turns out, is how most life scientists think evolution works. Smooth changes and occasional big jumps

It has been a while since the last great leap forward. Important recent developments include software defined networks and network function virtualisation. While the technologies may be big news for service providers they’re invisible to everyday technology customers. They are hardly the stuff of a great leap forward.

Despite the industry pushing hard in 2015, nothing seismic happened. It was a year of consolidation. There were some excellent products, see the list at the bottom of this post.

Laying groundwork for the next wave

At best we can say some companies laid the seeds of possible future great leaps. While we won’t know what they are until they flower, driverless cars may be one. But don't hold your breath.

This isn’t unusual. Great leaps forward don’t happen every year. Indeed, there are more years without great leaps than with them.

Stagnation

Something that is almost the inverse of a great leap forward happened in 2015. In some sectors we saw stagnation.

Personal computers have struggled for years. Sales continue to fall. There's been little noteworthy innovation since Apple introduced the MacBook Air.

Touchscreens were a fizzer. The biggest slump in PC sales coincided with the mainstream arrival of touchscreens.

The problem is with Windows PCs. Apple sales have grown while Windows computer sales show double digit declines. HP attempted to reach new markets with the HP Stream 11, which is a Windows laptop for under NZ$400. If anything it underlines the commodity nature of the Windows laptop sector.

Even Apple shows weakness. The 2015 MacBook was a clever attempt to meet a market need. It works well for some users, but sales haven’t caught fire.

A bright spot for hybrid PCs

One bright spot is advanced hybrid portables like Microsoft’s Surface Pro and the Huawei Matebook introduced last week. Their sales are growing at around 20 percent albeit off a small base.

Hybrid sales may be growing, but they aren’t winning new hearts fast enough to plug the gaps elsewhere in the PC business.

Phones have replaced PCs at the centre of our working and online lives. For years they developed at a clip adding exciting and useful new features each year.

In 2015 that came to a halt. Phones got a little better. Cheap phones got much better. But there were no compelling new features to justify faster-than-essential upgrades.

Phone technology has stagnated. No doubt there are cool new ideas bubbling in the labs in Apple, Samsung or Huawei. But, at least for now, we appear to have reached the limit of existing phone formats.

Huawe's P8 is a solid flagship phone from the Chinese company that sells at a competitive price. It's good, but not ground breaking.

Fixing Windows

Windows 10 is a better effort from Microsoft than the limp Windows 8, but it does little more than put the operating system back on track. It is not a dramatic breakthrough. It is a much-needed fix.

Microsoft scores better elsewhere. Office continues to evolve and spread its reach to new devices. The Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book are great computers, but neither is a great leap forward.

The most hyped introduction of 2015 was Apple’s Watch. It wasn’t new, a slew of watches were already on sale when it arrived.

It wasn’t special. Sure, many people reading this will disagree and tell me how their Watch is an essential part of their life. It’s almost a year after the Watch first appeared and there is no buzz. Even developers have given up sending out gushing press releases about Watch apps. That may change with the 2015 update to the format.

Towards the end of the year we looked at Huawei's giant sized Android-based Watch which also joined the crowded wearable market.

Virtual reality continues to generate media copy. Devices may pour out from factories, but little is happening with content. And the content that has appeared is lame.