September
Apple continued its 2010 tradition of starting the month with a product launch in September, with consumer electronics being the focus this time. Unveiled were new versions of its iPod range, including a tiny Nano with a touch-screen, and the long-awaited new version of Apple TV.
The latter was generally considered an anticlimax, as all it really does is link your TV to iTunes, but Apple has still sold loads of them. Talking of iTunes, Apple also launched a new social networking service based around its media app, but to date it doesn't seem to have taken off.
And the iPad finally had some credible competition this month, with the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Tab. The seven inch tablet was based on Android 2.2, and was generally considered to be a good effort, despite costing as much as the bigger iPad. However it's only with the release of the tablet-optimized version of Android that the tablet market is expected to get really competitive.
Competition in the low-power chip industry got hotter yet with the announcement of ARM's next-generation CPU design - the Cortex-A15, codenamed Eagle - which promised five times the performance of the most powerful ARM cores found in today's phones.
The UK mobile market saw the first fruit of the combination of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, as both of their customers were given the option of using both networks. ARM partner Qualcomm had its annual European jamboree in London, where CEO Paul Jacobs his team revealed some of the stuff we can expect mobile phones to be capable of before long.
Nokia, which was under pressure to act following its continued loss of smartphone market share, finally decided to replace its CEO with Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft. This happened on the eve of Nokia World - it's big annual event - where remaining Nokia employees were still insisting Symbian is a competitive smartphone OS.
