The year 2005 in its resource Engadget Switched On column called “The Year of the rotation,” since IBM sold the PC business to Lenovo, Apple announced the resignation of the PowerPC platform on Mac and Microsoft was using PowerPC in the XBox 360. But in 2011, according to journalists who may be called the “Year of fundamental changes”, as his backdrop, many decisions in 2005 looks very bleak.
HP.Perhaps no other technology company publicly expressed remorse and so much uncertainty as the one that is often seen cornerstone of Silicon Valley. One year after the purchase of hardware and software developments, Palm and a few weeks after release of the first tablet webOS, HP left the business in which she was going to play for high stakes, but then decided to transfer the software developments open community, while retaining the leadership and Patent Portfolio. The company promises to return to the market webOS-tablets in the next, or in 2013.
Of course, even larger issue that was before the company was a possible solution for the full allocation or even selling the PC division. The solution to this could be the same step to enter the market for consumer PCs in the 1990s and the merger with Compaq in 2001. Currently, HP reserves the PC division in its composition, and still is focused on Windows.
Nokia.Within a few months to make the HP webOS open, Nokia, which for years resisted Microsoft, maintaining its own mobile operating system Symbian, Windows Phone platform chosen as the key (having decided to jump on it with his “burning under their feet”) on the market smartphones, abandoning MeeGo, which has developed with Intel. Following this decision, Nokia has released the first and last N9 smartphone based on MeeGo, which was warmly received and presented design used today in the flagship Nokia based Windows Phone – Lumia 800. Microsoft, Nokia wanting to link to Windows Phone, allowed the Finnish manufacturer to make such changes to the operating system, which can not be on the other side of a company.
Nokia – not the only manufacturer of smart, well-known around the world, faced with enormous changes in its business activities, including in terms of the owner. After a decade of participation in the joint venture Sony Ericsson, Sony is fully acquired, in order to more closely engage the mobile business. And Motorola has become part of Google, although Google promises that in terms of business machines manufacturer Droid will be completely free, and the absorption is committed only to obtain patents for Android.
Adobe. Entering into 2011, it seemed, Adobe is confident in the future of Flash on all platforms, including mobile. But the reluctance of Apple support systems for their mobile platform, the company opted for HTML5 and decided to discontinue the development of Flash on mobile systems and internet TV. The company is now one of the leaders in the promotion of HTML 5.
Microsoft.The great success of Windows Phone has an agreement with Nokia, but when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Steve Ballmer) asked about the risky product of his company, he called the next version of Windows. This is not a big surprise, since all the company’s success is still associated primarily with the desktop OS. However, in the case of Windows 8, which was presented to the world at a conference in September, BUILD, it is easy to see that the assertion of the risk is especially true.
Windows 8 will offer a new touch UI Metro, through which the company wants to regain a significant portion of the tablet market, “stolen” from her release of iPad. In addition, it will be the first desktop OS that can run on ARM processors from companies such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, or TI, which should ensure greater efficiency. Support for the new x86 processor architecture introduced in addition to Windows for the first time since the days of Windows NT, which could run on both PowerPC and MIPS.
Many of these steps, if not most of them will bear fruit in 2012, so for the industry it will be very interesting year.