Best and Worst of 2011: A Landmark Year in Computing

Biggest Fail: AT&T and T-Mobile USA Merger
It is not often that we hear that a merger fails to meet regulatory approval and even rarer, ends up in lawsuits brought by regulatory bodies after some nasty documents leak out, showing that a $39 billion takeover was "consumer choice reducing" rather than "network building". This is one of largest merger fallouts of all times, and you'll have to wait for the epilogue during 2012. Who will get fired, who will stay - remains to be seen.

Runner up: Nokia Announces Microsoft linkup
When Apple announced that the company is would be moving to Intel processors, the sales of Apple products did not suffer, since the company management executed it nicely, bringing in binary compatibility. In the case of charisma-less Stephen Elop, his announcement destroyed the company momentum and by-that-point excellent sales of the Nokia N9, causing the market leader to drop from first to third spot in the smartphone ranking. This time last year, Nokia was shipping more phones than #2, #3 and #4 together. While a Microsoft future may be a sound business plan, the way it was executed reflected poorly on the stock and company sales. Nokia might end 2012 with the new CEO, since this one obviously hasn't got a clue.

Runner up: HP Spins off PC Business
In a move that got Leo Apotheker fired, HP thoroughly shook its own ecosystem to the core, announcing that the company might spin off the Personal Systems Group, keeping printers and servers in the "old company". Given that the "new company" would probably come back and compete against HP in the "printers" and "servers", no wonder that the idea ultimately faltered.


Worst Executive: Stephen Elop, Nokia
While the move to Windows Phone might have been a logical choice for a company that spent more money on developing Symbian than Apple spends on iOS, Google on Android, RIM on BlackBerry OS and Microsoft on Windows Phone TOGETHER, the way how poorly the translation was handled showed clear disrespect to hundreds of millions of Nokia consumers, who all went to "award" the company by moving to competing devices. His lack of leadership and clear communication caused Nokia to drop into the red for the first time in almost two decades, as well as removing more revenue from the company than Google achieves in a year.

Runner up: Leo Apotheker, HP
Leo Apotheker was last in the long line of mistakes HP Board of Directors have made while running the company. Some of board members had not even met Mr. Apotheker, who escaped SAP just before they lost the verdict against ORACLE (read: using pirated Oracle software). Leo never showed interest in the way how the company worked and wanted to turn HP into Oracle (SAP with a hardware division). Ultimately, his $11 billion buyout of Autonomy might be a good move, but shaking up the world's largest PC maker was something that didn't do any good to HP's stockholders.

Runner up: Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Research In Motion
Respect. This is one of cornerstones of any business. You have to respect your customers and you have to respect people that don't share your view. In the case of RIM, walkout from an interview with the BBC was a clear case of disrespect for journalist integrity, while not all BlackBerry Playbook customers were treated the same - you had to already have a BlackBerry phone in order to use all the capabilities of the platform. If RIM wants to stay in business, the company will have to significantly change its behavior.


Worst Event: Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami
There isn't much to be said about March 11 earthquake and the catastrophic tsunami wave that ensued afterwards. Numerous cameras showed the world that we're only guests on this planet that can very easily get rid of us all, with about 19,000 people perishing in the process. As Japan affects the complete global IT chain, the disruptions of Tohoku Eartquake on the supply chain started to really affect the IT world by the time second worst event happened, and that's a runner up.

Runner up: Thailand Floods
The world woke up to Thailand floods in October, but in reality, Thailand was hit by two waves of floods, with the first one not affecting the heavy industrial areas. The world's auto and IT makers were hit the hardest, with Honda destroying over 8,000 vehicles in the aftermath. The IT sector was hit the hardest, through, as 60% of Western Digital's capacity (25% WW) stopped overnight. Suppliers of majority of hard drive motors were was hit hard, causing a heavy spike in prices. Unfortunately, floods also meant the end of life for over 500 people.

Runner up: Security Breaches
2011 will also be remembered for the largest reported number of security breaches, with several hundred million credit card numbers being stolen. Special note goes to PlayStation Network which was unavailable for over a month - and 70 million people having their financials stolen in the process. A recent break in Valve's Steam also took details of well over 40 million people, but the company claimed that financial details were not affected. Overall a bad year for your personal data.

The Biggest Baloon: Zynga IPO
Special notion in this years' overview goes to Zynga for their IPO, which gathered less money than the company expected. When launching yourself on stock market, timing is everything and Zynga seemed to miss it. Instead of riding the wave of "higher market value than EA", Zynga today actually has lower value and the stock hasn't passed its initial IPO value of $9.50 per share.


This was 2011... what did we miss, where we were right, where we were off the mark? Comment below.