Source: eKapija | Tuesday, 19.01.2021.| 12:36

2020 RETROSPECTIVE: Investments and Plans in TELECOMMUNICATIONS and IT Most Interesting to eKapija Users

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If there was a sector that was extremely busy during the year marked by the pandemic, not counting healthcare, it’s certainly information technologies. Whether we wanted to or not, we all turned to modern technologies, internet and apps for working and making payments from home, which the IT sector certainly knew how to make use of, so the development of the Serbian IT market continued in 2020, with a growth of 7% and a value of over USD 600 million. Furthermore, the state and the local self-governments put special focus on the development of young and innovative companies from this sector, by investing in smart development centers and technology parks.

These are the events in the IT sector that drew the most attention from eKapija’s readers in 2020:

The first place belongs to the announcement of the beginning of the construction of the innovation startup center Smart City Center in Loznica, where training courses and programs for the young in the field of preparing innovative solutions for the digitization of the public administration in the territory of the city will be carried out.

The future look of the Smart City Center (Photo: Artija Loznica)

As the city administration of Loznica pointed out for eKapija, the aim of the project is to have as many startups founded as possible that will develop innovative solutions in the field of digitization in the public sector, which will in turn lead to the employment of the young and prevent them from moving out of Loznica.

The second spot belongs to the news that the Science-Technology Park in Novi Sad opened in late January 2020. This investment worth EUR 26 million is meant for the Faculty of Technical Sciences, and the construction of the park was a joint project of the Government of Serbia and the Provincial Government, with help from the City of Novi Sad and the Faculty of Technical Sciences.

(Photo: Pokrajinska vlada)

The smart green building of 30,000 m2 provides state-of-the-art conditions for the activities of the students and the professors of the Faculty of Technical Sciences, but also numerous startups and IT companies and has become an important linchpin, connecting the science and the economy in the fields of information technologies and startups.

The third spot features another science-technology park, the one in Nis, whose construction was completed in the summer of 2020.

(Photo: Naučno tehnološki park Niš)

As the director, Milan Randjelovic, told eKapija at the time, the aim of the investment worth over EUR 20 million, along with the founding of the Startup Center Nis and the construction of the Multipurpose Laboratory Unit of the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, is to attract innovative tech-development companies and create the conditions for their development through connecting with scientific-research and higher-education organizations.

The fourth place on eKapija’s list features the news from early 2020 that a new kind of SIM card is available in Serbia from December 2019 – eSIM.

eSIM was announced as a “big thing”, something that will essentially change mobile telephony, because it functions as a classical SIM card, except that there is no physical card – it’s all digital.

Illustration (Photo: Monkey Business Images/shutterstock.com)

It is said that eSIM brings many new possibilities, especially in the sphere of interconnected devices within the Internet of Things, but also that it will solve a range of telecommunications problems. For example, it will enable certain phones to support several SIM cards simultaneously, although they lack the physical slots for several SIM cards.

Next-to-last on the list, in the fifth spot, is the news that paying by scanning a QR code has been enabled in Serbia.

Illustration (Photo: Pixabay / geralt)

In late February 2020, the National Bank of Serbia enabled a new way of payment at points-of-sale – a payment instrument whose use at POS tagged “IPS” (Instant Payments Serbia) allows for the issuing of an order for an instant payment for goods and services.

These payments are initiated through an upgraded app for mobile banking by simply displaying or scanning the NBS IPS QR code by choosing the “IPS show” or “IPS scan” option.

Finally, in the sixth spot is the news from June that the American company Epic Games intends to build a science center and development campus in Novi Sad.

Illustration (Photo: dotshock/shutterstock.com)

The Novi Sad-based company 3Lateral, a subsidiary of Epic Games, one of the leading tech companies in the field of interactive entertainment, has bought a parcel in Novi Sad center for the purpose of the construction of new premises for its team in Serbia. As announced, in three to four years, experts from the fields of arts and computer sciences will be developing the most advanced technologies for the whole world in this location.