Top five tech stories of 2015

#5. Samsung announces the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.  At the first half of the year, Samsung announced two flagship devices instead of the usual one. A lot of speculations and rumors being thrown around but it was a huge announcement and a surprise to many considering that Samsung wasn’t doing very well the year before. The new design placed Samsung back in the groove and both the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge were expected to sell very well. And they did.

#4. The Apple Watch announcement. Smart watches have been around for a couple of years but everyone was waiting for Apple to come up with their own.  When Tim Cook finally announced the Apple Watch, it was all over the news. The industry expected that the Watch will do to Apple what the iPod did many years ago.

#3. Gigabit Internet has arrived in the country. For many years, Internet speeds in the Philippines has always been a very hot topic. This is primarily due to reports that the country has been lagging behind in terms of broadband speeds. By last quarter of the year, both PLDT and Globe made the announcements that they are offering gigabit Internet to residential subscribers. It attracted mixed reactions but it was one of the biggest tech news, and a very good one at that, this year.

#2. AlDub breaks World Twitter Record. The Philippines is dubbed as the social media capital of the world so it’s no surprise that the country has been on the worldwide trending topics very often. This title has been cemented into world record books this year after super celebrity couple Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza, more commonly known as AlDub, scored over 41 million tweets for their hashtag in just 24 hours. It became the most tweeted hashtag in the history of Twitter. Of course, Twitter official quickly took notice and verified the win not only for the couple but for the Philippines as well.

#1. Telstra-San Miguel Partnership. Telstra has perhaps created the most noise in the Philippine Internet this year after it announced plans to create a joint venture with San Miguel Corp.  and put up a mobile network in the Philippines to compete with Smart and Globe. A lot of people were excited as a new player will potentially disrupt the duopoly and offer a better  service. The partnership is not yet set in stone but it gave consumers something to look forward to in 2016.