Feel the burn: in the aftermath of year's biggest hype

At the beginning of the year it looked as though Apple might have to give its much hyped iPhone a new name when Cisco threatened to sue. The issue was resolved quickly and the iPhone launched in the US at the end of June.

Despite being well received by fanboys, Apple soon cut the price and was forced to pacify irate fashionistas with a refund.

Some estimates expect sales of three million units by the end of 2007, although they had reached only 1.4 million by the end of October.

Apple, meanwhile, caused frustration to developers big and small by not allowing anyone outside Cupertino to write code to the local software or hardware and forcing people to endure needlessly time consuming re-writes to make applications work with the iPhone Safari browser. All eyes are now on next February and whether the planed iPhone SDK can convert pent-up curiosity into applications.

When is a phone not a phone? When it's a Gphone

Nothing succeeds on the Silicon Valley meme scene more than hype, especially when a big sexy name is involved. Commentators and cheerleaders will mob the smallest suggestion of an event, rapidly converting it into pseudo fact. Into this came Google's Gphone.

While Apple's plans for the iPhone were largely what everyone expected, Google's much-anticipated device turned out to be something completely different, leaving the bitter taste of disappointment in many mouths.

Speculation about the Gphone first surfaced in March and rumbled on through the summer.

When Google finally fessed up, it turned out not to be a phone at all but a "platform" based on Linux. Underscoring how far Google's platform - called Android - has to go, at least in terms of practical uptake, was the fact that that Google's new Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) promoting the platform lacks backing from the world's biggest handset manufacturer, its biggest cell phone operator and - arguably - one of the industry's most influential providers of software. That's Nokia, Verizon and Microsoft, to you Eric.

IP, litigation, and Linux

Linux and open source were never far away from the headlines. Microsoft General counsel Brad Smith took the FUD baton from boss Steve Ballmer this year, alleging Linux violated 235 Microsoft-owned patents. Once again, though, Microsoft took no legal steps to enforce its patents, but did convince a number of lesser Linux vendors to sign patent protection pacts in the guise of interoperability deals.

Another Linux blowhard fared less well. Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) finally bowed to the inevitable having started the year denying it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The court ruling in favour of Novell and IBM in August, though, finally tipped SCO over the edge.

Database developer EnterpriseDB, meanwhile, found itself struggling with the open source business model. It started the year bullishly with predictions of growth and plans to oust Oracle, but ended the year with news of layoffs.