March
Intel wasn't about to take ARM's provocation lying down and soon announced a partnership with the world's biggest semiconductor foundry - TSMC - to enable Intel's Atom CPU designs to be incorporated into SoCs (System on Chip). These are the kind of low power systems used in mobile phones - a market dominated by ARM's ecosystem.
While Intel wasn't looking, AMD completed the spin-off of its manufacturing operation, which was promptly named GLOBALFOUNDRIES by some capital letter fetishist within the new company.
Another tech giant to spring into action this month was Cisco, which not only decided it was going to enter the data centre market, but decided to buy Flip Video maker Pure Digital. This was to be the first of many Cisco acquisitions in 2009.
Things weren't going so well for US technology retailer Circuit City, however, as it was finally put out of its misery. In contrast, the company it had failed to compete with - Best Buy - detailed plans to open stores in the UK, and take on incumbent technology retail giant DSGi.
