Yeah, I'm back, big as life and twice as ugly!
So ...hum... it’s been a while, and many things have happened in the mean time...
The good news is that the big guys are still there, squaring off the battle ground and keeping us happy and busy watching their moves.
Just to recap some of the highlights of the (almost) year that passed...we had the usual sex, drugs & rock & roll ...and that is actually not a figure of speech...
You probably already heard/ read about the sexual scandal centered around Mark Hurd, the now ex CEO of HP...in the end it all proved to be much ado about nothing, with Mark Hurd joining his friend Larry Ellison at Oracle, and HP dropping charges against him and looking into SAP’s garden for their new CEO.
We also did have some rock & roll, back in September, when Apple launched the new iPods, iTunes 10 and Ping, its own attempt at social networking (so far met with mixed feelings).
As for the drugs... well, when you think iPhone 4/ iPad waiting lines, time spent playing FarmVille on Facebook etc... addiction is one of the first words that does come to mind.
so below a random reminder of the main events in the tech world (purely based on my own recollection of the last months)
we had the scandal around the stolen iPhone 4, followed by its (very predictable) launch and the Antennagate (long live the bumper!)
the incredible boom of social gaming companies with Zynga taking the front in the news... coupled with Google's increasing interest in the social gaming movement - expected to materialize in the coming months with Google Me...all this in light of a clear shift in the consumption of the Internet (people spending more time online on Facebook and social related sites and less on generic websites and on Google)
going back to what seems to be the media favorite - Apple, of course- plenty of ink spilled over the much gossiped and long anticipated tablet...the iPad is definitely one of the most talked about topic of the entire year, ranging from the never-ending jokes about its (somehow) funny name, to the lack of Flash support (and the fight with Adobe that followed) to finally, the lack of a clear use and categorization of the product.
nine months from its launch, I think it is now safe to say that the iPad is a success. I also cannot help notice just how similar the fates of the iPhone and the iPad have been (with the media hurrying to proclaim their premature death, only to be proved wrong by the sales results and consumer adoption).
needless to say that the iPad's (unexpected) success drew the attention of most of the big tech companies out there, making us witness a non-stop sequence of tablet launches from the likes of Samsung, HP and RIM (with more rumored to follow)
another rising star of the tech world is Foursquare and the localization based applications in general (Gowalla, Yelp, MyTown, SCVNGR & co). They have grown substantially enough to raise the eyebrows of the big guys (and make them think of opening their wallet). Google was rumored to have tried to buy Yelp (it failed!), while Facebook had its shot at Foursquare, only to then decide to launch a competing service - Facebook Places.
Groupon and daily deals websites (like LivingSocial and the numerous other Groupon copycats) also stormed the tech industry this year, with Groupon being considered the fastest growing company ever.
also rising this year are the so-called Angel Investors (high profile entrepreneurs behind most of the established startups on the market, having the know how and capital to support new ventures), which are now starting to compete with the long established VCs to attract the most valuable new startups. Other than investing in startups, they apparently also like to collude (leading to yet another scandal of the year, called, surprisingly or not, the AngelGate)
and last but not least, just to get closer to the most recent events, TechCrunch (one of the leading technology blogs worldwide, and one of my own leading information source) has been bought by AOL for something between $25m to $40m.
Not bad, right? :)
So before I really get back to business, let’s just take a look at the current status quo of the industry.
All's fair in love and war, and one thing is clear: in the tech industry, relationship statuses change almost as frequent as in real life.
