There really was only one story in the fourth quarter – the death of Apple’s influential co-founder Steve Jobs.

 

Speculation kicked off when Jobs finally stepped down from the firm in August after a long medical leave of absence. The announcement shook the firm’s share price, despite market watchers backing the competency of replacement Tim Cook who was acting CEO in Jobs absence.

 

Former rivals were quick to heap praise on the Apple co-founder. Their thoughts were perhaps best summarized by ex-Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who said simply that working with Jobs over the course of almost half the pair’s lives had been an “insanely great honor”.

 

Jobs’ death came just a few days after Apple launched its latest iPhone, the 4S, which garnered a muted response from industry analysts due to a lack of significant improvement on the previous model – specifically the omission of LTE. The biggest selling point for the new unit is the addition of Siri voice control, but even that hit problems outside the US by struggling to understand accents in various countries.

 

Despite the initial bagging, Apple’s faithful snapped up the device in their droves. Demand for the unit was so high, co-founder Steve Wozniak even had to wait in line to buy one.

 

Rival Nokia arguably had more riding on the launch of its Lumia 800, the firm’s first running Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. The device is meant to spearhead the firm’s fightback in the smartphone market, and Nokia even tried to inject some Apple-style enthusiasm into its launch presentation.

 

Unlike the iPhone 4S, industry watchers were generally impressed by Nokia’s first WP7 unit, however credit ratings agency Fitch questioned the level of profit the vendor will make from the new devices.

 

A tough year for RIM continued with a fall in earnings during fiscal 3Q12 – running to November 26 – caused by a serious outage caused when a UK data center failed. Although alternative sites took up the slack, they were quickly overwhelmed, causing the problem to spread to three continents at its peak.