As we say goodbye to the noughties and 2009 comes to an end, its worth looking back at some of the defining trends, toys, and game shifters of 2009. This year saw alot of concepts first conceived in 2008, materialise and mature and towards the end of 2009, the all important question of profitability and longevity being asked of nealry all the players. So lets take a look and see how things went.

Winners of 2009 : Apple, HP, Google, Microsoft (WINDOWS 7), Oracle. Blackberry.

Loosers of 2009 : Sony, Dell, Nokia, Sony Ericsson.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing did well this year with more and more users and companies switching to the cloud. If your not familiar with what cloud computing involves, simply put, it’s the provision of a computer based service over the internet so instead of booting up software stored on your computer, you log onto a site or service which then performs the same job. Examples include, Google Docs, Spotify, Mobile me,  Evernote and Adobe Photoshop Express to name a few. As fast reliable internet access finds its way onto more and more devices, developers are increasingly able to make these applications available pretty much any where an internet connection exists especially with mobile phone operators turning up the heat to provide 3G access to the net. The issue with the cloud though has been the few times its failed. Early in the year Google Mail crashed effecting not just personal users but also business operating on the enterprise scheme. Although the outage was temporary, and only affected the email service, questions were asked of what a similar outage would do if it occurred across the whole service much in the same way Blackbeery and Apple experienced with their push services towards the end of year. Some services proved massively popular Spotify being one of them. The music streaming service reached a million users and currently the only way to get hold of the service is to purchase a premium account, or if a friend still has a spare invite, then through them. Although the service is well geared for growth from a technical stance, the business model doesn’t scale up in the same way. In short, the marginal cost of selling a track is the same whether users buy 1 song or 1000 songs. Sure the adds help support their revenue and profit models but again this doesn’t scale as more and more of us listen to free music and don’t buy the tracks.

Computing

The computing world went through several changes in 2009, the most noticeable being the popularity of net-books. These devices were popular not only with users, but also with manufacturers and mobile phone operators, with some devices starting as cheap as £99 and others moving onto the wrong end of the scale at £800.  Surfing the net, publishing documents and viewing and storing digital data is all most people use their computer for, so if it can be done in convenient form factor and at a decent price without all the fancy extras, its easy to understand why by 2012, net-book sales are forcasted to hit 50million units. Lets not forget that Apple, one of the big players in the market, hasn’t released its offering yet and Google are also getting in on the action with a device and OS due to be launched early this year targeted at the net-book market.

One of the internet’s quiet sectors, (although not in activity) has been virtual worlds. Virtual worlds have been one of the few areas in technology still booming even in the recession with 29% growth in most recent quarter, a $2billion industry in China alone and almost $600million invested in the industry early in the year.  Today, Buzz “Erik” Lightyear paid a record $330,000 for Crystal Palace Space Station in the Entropia Universe as what could be a strategic move to regain larger profits due to the activity happening inside the virtual space station in the virtual world. Its seems mind boggling the figures being put behind what is ultimately fiction and non existent.

Operating systems maintained themselves in 2009 with Microsoft launching Windows 7, an improvement that is more likely than ever to persuade personal and business users to shift from XP or Vista and move forward. The operating system itself, proved to be more stable and efficient in the way it worked and as a result, sales of the operating system have been strong in late 2009 when it was launched. Windows still holds the largest market share in the computing market but once again Apple has cut into the premium market achieving 90%  market share in this alone. Chrome OS is also due to be released on netbooks this year, built of the same architecture as their browser, its intended to take advantage of the abundance of hotspots and availability of the internet through mobile operators. It could however fall victim to the same issues that have occurred in cloud computing.

In general the computer market has struggled to cope with the shift in demand for ranging devices, with the laptop now becoming or making the move towards being the preferred form factor for computing needs and desktops only still having a share in the market due to their low market value, or the ability to customise which appeals to professionals and enterprise users. 2009 should prove interesting and challenging as more and more hand held devices like smart-phones take away our dependency on computers as we’ve known them for the last decade and instead shift demand to more mobile forms of computing like net-books, tablet pc’s and smart-phones.

Mobile Phones

Well simply put, Apple owned the mobile phone market, successfully becoming the most profitable handset maker in the industry without holding the largest market share. The launch of version 3 of the software as well as the upgrade of the iPhone from 3G to 3GS as well as its release on multiple networks in countries like the UK meant apple could continue to grow on sales in a device that is best suited for the premium range of the mobile phone market, and apple aren’t just making money shifting the devices, they are doing a good job bringing in the cash while users use the devices with the app store reaching 2billion downloads in 2009 and paid apps becoming more common. With January just round the corner, a further update to the iPhone software could be made as well as the possible addition of a new addition to the range.

That said, Android has enjoyed good growth cutting into low end market. Many developers and handset manufacturers have been switching from windows mobile to Android due to easier licensing and cheaper costs, but more importantly, a platform for distributing apps worthy of competing with the app store that was engineered by Apple. January the 5th should see the launch of the Google Nexus phone which hopes to take on the iPhone and is being supported by T-Mobile…

On the other hand, its been a tough year for pretty much everyone else, with replicas of the iPhone targeted at the lower end market being sold and manufacturers struggling to innovate and develop an offering that can persuade consumers to part with their cash. The 2 biggest losers seem to be Nokia and Windows mobile. Nokia currently still have the largest market share in the mobile phone market but have struggled to put anything out there. On-top of that they seem to be throwing a temper about it, claiming that Apple have infringed on its copyright in virtually all of its products in particular the iPhone. This is bound to be a long legal battle not due to start until 2011. Windows on the other hand have just failed to develop at the pace of the market, with Windows mobile being stuck in the dark ages and still no single platform to purchase apps, which do exist on the platform in abundance, but finding and installing them can be a difficult task.

The Net

Websites have grown in 2009 almost to a point where now the problem is that there’s too much content out there and the big challenge isn’t getting it out there but curating it. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have not only grown but have become big traffic spinners as well as leaching themselves into the way the internet works, with the Facebook connect taking full form and re-tweets and twitter acting almost as the new real-time RSS feed. Sites like Bebo and MySpace have struggled to keep up and both are taking serious knocks in traffic while Twitter enjoy continued rises in usage.

In the search field, not much to say here, Google remains king, but the most recent re-brand and re launch of Windows Live, Bing has proved a worthy contender. Yahoo is admitting that search isn’t its strategic outlook and they are looking at ways to diversify especially with their recent marketing push. Browsers continue to battle with updates coming out quarterly, chrome finally taking form in version 4beta with extensions and features similar to those on Firefox, and Firefox looking to hit version 4 mid way through 2010 or towards the end of summer.

Gaming

iPhone made a serious stand here too, establishing itself as the 4th console in mobile gaming, however the Nintendo DS remained the best selling console ever. other than that very average. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was seen as the biggest game of the year, with most publishers moving back launch dates to 2010 to avoid direct competition with the game.  X box live got the addition of Facebook and twitter, however these have proved difficult to use without a keyboard or decent text input mechanism. 2009 saw consoles shifting to media entertainment hubs with Xbox and Sky teaming up to give a new offering and the PS3 getting iPlayer streaming services supported on its platform, all this movement suggesting that 2010 could see consoles becoming a viable platform for distributing on demand television. This also highlights a more general trend, this year the Xbox and PS3’s full potential may shine through as the initial hype around devices like the Nintendo Wii dies down and the power consoles step through and show their full potential with games, pricing, and form factors coming of age.