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As I sit here on New Years Eve, I look back on 2010 and several things pop to mind:
- Biggest Fail Of 2010: Skype almost took this title at the last minute. But Apple has this title locked up with their iPhone 4 antenna fiasco. This was handled so poorly on a variety of levels including Steve-O’s insistence that users are just holding the phone wrong, their rather lame explanations, and the whole free bumper thing when things got too hot for Apple. Of course that included some shots at some of their competition which were ill advised as the competition shot back. This will be studied in MBA programs for years to come as an example of how not to handle a crisis.
- Biggest Disruptive Tech Of 2010: Quite simply, it’s the iPad. It’s scared the crap out of the tech world and forced competitors into the tablet space with anything that will even seem like a competitor to the iPad. For as much as Apple screwed up the iPhone 4, they hit a home run with the iPad.
- Biggest Fall From Grace of 2010: RIM. They are in free fall having lost market share to the iPhone and Android phones after being kings of the wolds for so long. Now their only hope is the Playbook. On paper it looks like it may compete with the iPad. We’ll see if that pans out early in 2011. In the meantime, that sucking sound that you are hearing will continue to be coming from Waterloo Ontario.
- Biggest Tech Industry Personality of 2010: Mark Zuckerburg. He’s everywhere. He’s Time’s Man Of The Year. He’s a billionaire because of Facebook. And despite what he says, the movie “The Social Network” has made him more famous. He should be asking for royalties.
- Biggest Tech Story Of 2010: The circus that surrounded that lost iPhone and Gizmodo buying it. Which then resulted in the cops raiding the house of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen. It’s a story that didn’t stop, much like that really bad case of diarrhea that you got from Mexico.
- Biggest Irritant Of 2010: The patent lawsuit. Everybody from Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, HTC, and Nokia are suing each other as well as others for patent infringement as a means to gain marketshare. Uber lame. The good news is that the kids of a lot of lawyers are going to be able to have excellent university educations.
- Biggest Tech Sleaze Of 2010: Mark Hurd. The dude faked expense reports to cover up his “activities.” That led to him leaving HP. But even that became a circus when he went to work for Oracle. Even Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had something to say about this. After a while, hearing about this story seemed like I was reading TMZ as it got more and more sleazy by the day.
That’s the stuff that jumps out at me. What do you have your list? Please post a comment and share your thoughts.
Happy new year!