Soon after Ballmer’s resignation, the news was overshadowed by an even bigger story.
In September, Microsoft announced it was buying Nokia’s smartphone and devices businesses for $US7.2 billion, with the Finnish telecommunications company retaining its Nokia-Siemens services network equipment business and the Nokia brand name.
The deal came after Nokia announced its smartphone sales had slumped 27% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2013, with an overall loss of €115 million ($A190 million) for the quarter.
The sales plunge was led by the company’s Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphone unit, where shipments fell 27% from 10.2 million units during the second quarter of 2012 to just 7.4 million for the same quarter in 2013.
To put that number into perspective, it was a little over one-tenth the number of smartphones sold by Samsung during the same quarter.
It was an inglorious end to a company that absolutely dominated the mobile industry through the 1990s and 2000s. As recently as 2010, when Apple sold 47 million smartphones, Nokia managed to sell 104 million.
According to prominent industry analysts, such as former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen, the fateful moment came in February 2011, when then chief executive Stephen Elop made the decision to switch its smartphones to the Windows Phone operating system.
Soon after, a leaked internal letter from Elop known as the “burning platform” memo likened the company’s situation in the mobile phone market to a person standing on a burning oil platform.
After the takeover was announced, Elop was named as one of the top contenders for the position of Microsoft chief executive.
It wasn’t just Nokia that had a tough time in the smartphone market at the hands of Samsung and Google.
In January, BlackBerry launched its new, all-touch BlackBerry 10 smartphone operating system. The platform, originally scheduled for late 2011, had been delayed by a year, preventing the company launching a flagship phone in 2012.
The Australian launch for the first smartphone to run the new platform, the Z10, came in March at a gala event in Sydney hosted by Adam Spencer. A second device using a traditional BlackBerry keyboard, called the Q10, came soon after.
While the reviews were generally positive, the new devices failed to be the big comeback success the company’s then-chief executive, Thorsten Heins, had hoped for.
By August, the company formed a special five-member panel to examine takeover options after director and Canadian investment guru Prem Watsa quit the board.
In its September quarter results, the full carnage was laid bare. The Canadian smartphone maker reported just $US1.6 billion in revenues for the quarter, down 45% year-on-year and 49% quarter-on-quarter.
The company also revealed it sold just 3.7 million smartphones for the quarter – and less than half of those ran BlackBerry 10.
Total losses came in at $US965 million, including a massive $US934 million inventory writedown against unsold stock of the company’s Z10 smartphone.
The company announced more than 4500 staff layoffs, representing nearly 40% of its global workforce, while Heins bought a new private jet.
Meanwhile, the company’s rollout of its Messenger app for Android and iOS was frozen due to technical issues with its release.
In early November, with banks uncertain of the company’s long-term future, Watsa failed to raise the requisite $4.7 billion for a buyout, instead lending the company $US1 billion.
As part of the deal, Heins stood aside as chief executive, replaced by former Sybase chief executive John Chen, with Watsa rejoining the board.
Heins received a $US22 million golden parachute for his efforts, significantly less than the $US55.6 million he would have received had the sale gone through.
Last year, Facebook’s disastrous IPO ended in tears – followed by lawsuits.
Thankfully, the outcome was not repeated when its social media rival, Twitter, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in November.
After opening at $US26 per share, the company’s share price surged 72.69% in its first trading session.
It closed at $US44.90 per share, before dropping slightly to $US44.44 in after-hours trading.
Making the result even more amazing was the state of its balance sheet.
While the tech giant has revenues of $US534.46 million and around 230 million users worldwide, it has never posted a profit.
Despite this, the company now has a market capitalisation north of $US20 billion, with chief executive Dick Costolo claiming the company’s long-term investment strategy has prevented it from chasing profits in the short term.
For Apple, 2013 was a solid if somewhat unspectacular year.
In June, the company released a redesigned version of its smartphone and mobile operating system, iOS7, alongside a new version of its Mac OS X desktop operating system, known as Mavericks.
It was the year that Apple finally unveiled a low-cost version of its iPhone, known as the iPhone 5c, alongside a new 64-bit flagship smartphone called the iPhone 5s, complete with a 64-bit processor and a fingerprint sensor.
Then, in October, the company unveiled a lighter version of its iPad, known as the iPad Air.
None of the products had the industry-shaking impact of the unveiling of the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone or iPad.
That said, with billions in profits each quarter, a solid second place in the smartphone market and the world’s biggest selling tablet, solid and unspectacular for Apple is better than most companies could dream of.
Last, but certainly not least for gamers, 2013 marked the introduction of next generation games consoles from both Sony and Microsoft.
Coming a year after Nintendo launched its Wii U system, Sony announced one million first-day sales of its PlayStation 4 system, but the launch was marred by a number of angry consumers taking to social media to complain about non-functional systems.
Sony’s first-day sales were soon matched by the first-day sales of Microsoft’s new Xbox One system.
So how will the two new devices perform over the long term? We’ll have to wait until next year to find out!
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
