Looking back at 2015, I found it pretty interesting how the tech market was reshaping itself that year. Let me walk you through what really caught everyone's attention back then.

First thing that stood out was mobile hitting a wall. Smartphones had been this unstoppable force for years, but 2015 marked a turning point. IDC predicted growth would slow to just 10.4% that year, compared to 27.5% the year before. Still, with 1.4 billion units shipping globally, the money was far from gone—the market was just maturing. Apple was riding this wave hard, selling over 231 million iPhones in fiscal 2015. Pretty wild considering iOS only held about 15.6% market share, yet Apple captured most of the industry's actual profits. The stock itself was trading at a P/E of 11 versus the S&P 500's 21, which honestly looked cheap.

Then there was social media. This was the year it became clear these platforms weren't just trendy—they were building real, massive businesses. Ad spending on social networks jumped 33.5% in 2015, and researchers expected it to balloon from $11 billion in 2013 to nearly $36 billion by 2017. Facebook was obviously the king here, pulling in $12 billion in revenue through the first nine months of that year, up 50%. Beyond just the core platform, they had Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR all sitting on multibillion-dollar opportunities.

Cloud computing was another major tech trends story nobody could ignore. Global spending shot up 21% in 2015, and everyone was expecting it to cross $100 billion for the first time in 2016. Amazon had positioned itself as the clear leader, controlling roughly 30% of the global market. What made Amazon interesting was how AWS's profitability was quietly funding their entire e-commerce operation.

Looking at these three pillars—mobile maturation, social media dominance, and cloud infrastructure—you could see the shape of where technology was heading. The winners were already pretty obvious even back then.