Did 2009 really have only 12 months? There was a stretch in the late spring and early summer where each day felt like Groundhog Day. Bad news seemed to repeat itselfand get worse each day. The tech sector struggled like every other, but the year was not a total loss. Scattered among the lowlights were moments of clarity, excitement, and sheer, geeked-out bliss. And, of course, there were the winners and losers. What follows is my look at the defining moments, trends, technologies, and products of 2009 and my winners and losers in each (By "losers," I mean those who lost, not those who are losers.).

TABLETS

I don't know if we've ever talked about a non-existent product as much as we did tablets in 2009. There are literally zero productson the market andas of this writing. Vaporware or not, in tablets and, certainly, in all of the ideas floated by TechCrunch, Microsoft, and, possibly, . These can and will be game-changing devices when and if they start to arrive in 2010.

Winner: Apple. The company did nothing and allowed a cloud of positive vapors to form around it. Steve Jobs is a genius.

Winner: Anyone who saw tech's equivalent of the Red Wolf.

Losers: Michael Arrington and Fusion Garage. These partners had the only "real" product in the tablet lineup. I know people who saw it. We may see it again, but until these two work out their differences, they'll remain in the losers' column.

Loser Addendum: As I wrote this, Fusion Garage reintroduced the CrunchPad as a $499 device known as "JooJoo." The name alone keeps it in the loser column.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

2009 turned into a very good year for computer platforms. Microsoft successfully launched an operating systemthe business-saving . Apple continued its winning waysat least as far as the Mac devoted are concernedand launched . In each case, the companies didn't stray far from the tried and true, but Microsoft, in particular, cleaned up the mess that was Vista and found its marketing mojo to pull off one of the most successful tech launches this decade. Coming in at the tail end of this year, Google's Chrome OS is the X-factor that no one can truly assess. It may be a game-changer in 2010, or it could suffer the same fate as virtually every other Linux-based operating system and end up as a niche/business player.

Winners: Microsoft and Apple.

Winner: Steve Ballmer. He delivered the biggest hit of his CEO career.

Loser: Linuxagain! It's a great platform that, that was Windows Vista, could not grow market share. Google Chrome OS could change all that.

COMPUTERS

The system business wasn't very good in 2009, and most manufacturers slowed down the introduction of new and significantly different models. In fact, for much of the year, . They sold like hotcakes and manufacturers, to the chagrin of Intel and Microsoft (who were getting no margins on, respectively, cheap Atom CPUs and dusty-old copies of Windows XP), kept rolling out new models. The fourth-quarter launch of Windows 7 seems to have reenergized the computer business, and we've seen a whole bunch of new models, many of which are not netbooks and some that offer significant new features like .

Winner: Netbooks. They ate up all the consumer system business in sight.

Winner: Microsoft. The company delivered Windows 7 to partners, as promised.

Losers: Just about every other kind of computer manufacturer who did not have a great 2009. 

EBOOKS

Amazon's Kindle burst onto the scene in 2007, but its made it a hot commodity and helped spur the nearly constant discussion about the long-term viability of the platform. It even helped spark the tablet mania. This year we saw Sony raise its game in the e-reader market but fail to deliver on promises like the delivery of a wireless model. And Barnes & Noble threw its ha er books into the ring with the Nook.

Winner: Amazon. It's got the best reader, best digital library, and most firmly-established commerce model.

Loser: Sony. It's offering good readers, but the has image issues and wireless promises remain unfulfilled.

Loser: Barnes & Noble. The Nook looks great, but where is it? How could Barnes & Noble allow itself to make the Amazon made two years earlier with the first Kindle?

SEARCH

Google has dominated this space for most of the decade, while competitors have either folded or spent oodles of money on pointless marketing and ad campaigns (Ask, anyone?). Microsoft has promised an Internet strategy since the mid-90s, but rarely ever delivers anything that looks and acts as if it was built in the age of the Internet. That all changed this year with the stunning success of . It made everyone sit up and take notice. For the second time in 12 months, Microsoft married smart marketing with a truly effective product. I don't know for sure, but I think Bing put Google in permanent after-burner mode. This year also saw one other hype machine, though I blame the Internet echo chamber and not the developers of Wolfram Alpha. This is a good, useful, and that everyone mistook for some sort of Google competitor. It's not.

Winner: Microsoft. It's actually getting search right.

Winner: Google. It still soundly trounces Microsoft and everyoneelse in the search space.

Loser: Wolfram Alpha. There was so much hype and so little importance for just about everybody.

CONTENT

Most people will tell you that they'll be happy when 2009 is over. Content providers might say that they wish 2009 never happened. People who generate stories of almost every kind had an incredibly tough year. Newspapers saw their ad sales fall through the floor, past the basement, and land somewhere in the molten core of our ever-spinning earth. They, in turn, started scrambling for ways to monetize what they post online. The surprising target of their ire in 2009: Google and especially Google News. The search engine points people to the news sites, but it doesn't pay anything to the media companies, or give them a slice of the ad revenue generated from running targeted advertising around their headlines and synopses. Content providers were also blowing jets of fire at blog mavens like Arianna Huffington, who's Huffington Post regularly rewrites stories found elsewhere. As the year ended, major moguls like Rupert Murdoch were putting all of their content behind pay walls and possibly even talking about . Meanwhile, Google had fallen back into defense mode, even offering to change the way it presents news stories on its services. This won't get any prettier in 2010.

Winners: Nobody.

Losers: Newspapers. They can't catch a break, and putting content behind pay walls may not be the way to save them.

Losers: Consumers. We're losing access to some of our favorite news content in the real world and online. 

SMARTPHONES

What had once been little more than battles and border skirmishes turned into all-out war in 2009, with smartphone manufacturers, service providers, and partners going after each other with a ferocity not witnessed since David Lee Roth took on Sammy Hagar (and all of Van Halen). Some might say Apple ignited the war with the iPhone. I think 2009's action was sparked by the remarkable . Palm produced the best product rollout I have ever seen. Every single journalist I spoke to at the event was wowed, and we all wanted one. Nearly 12 months later, that ardor has cooled a bit. It's still a great product, but Palm slipped up on the development kit delivery and there are still almost no apps. In the meantime, Google Android found its footing and, perhaps, its perfect partner in Verizon. The Droid is easily one of the best smartphones I saw and used this year. Motorola did some great stuff with Android, too, but nearly sabotaged it with an . Ultimately, smartphones became the single most important technology category in 2009, and that's unlikely to change in 2010.

Winners: Palm Pre, Droid phones, Apple iPhone, and BlackBerry Tour and Bold updates.

Loser: Palm. Where are the apps? Where is the excitement?

Loser: Microsoft. It did not update Windows Mobile quickly enough. Version 6.5 did not cut it in 2009, and I think Microsoft knows it. I expect things to be different in 2010.

WEB APPS

Microsoft and Google both raised their in 2009, though Microsoft's offerings are still more in the pupa stage rather than full-blown products that anyone can and should use. Google's Apps continue to improve, but they're still nowhere near as full-featured as their off-line counterparts. Even so, with Microsoft officially entering the fray and fully functioning Web applications set to appear in 2010, the world of desktop applications is on the precipice of some significant changes.

Winners: Consumers.

Losers: Existing Web app developersthose who lack the development, marketing, and advertising power of a Google or Microsoft.

CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing promises to be a hot topic in 2010, especially with the introduction of the . Still, 2009 was a bumpy year for the Internet-driven productivity paradigm. , , and other sites were knocked off by . Everytime people get excited about the idea of working in the cloud, with just a thin client on their desk, someone loses access to a Web site. Google started hedging its bets by incorporating offline access into popular Web services like Gmail. However, with Chrome OS on the horizon, there are still more questions than answers about whether or not we can live our days in the cloud.

Winner: Google.

Loser: Anyone, including Google, whose online service went dark for any period of time in 2009.

Loser: Anyone who was frustrated by Gmail's outages.

MICROSOFT AND YAHOO

Yahoo is primarily to blame for the inability to consummate a relationship with Microsoftone that could have easily turned either company into Google's most formidable opponent. In the end, we have to that mostly benefits Microsoft and its fledgling Bing search engine and, kind of, what Yahoo was once all about. I just keep thinking that this was one very big missed opportunity.

Winner: Microsoft. Of course.

Loser: Yahoo. It had so many good tools and services, so much promise, and so much mismanagement. 

DRM

Unlike most people I knowat least the tech watchersI do not get my about digital rights management. I know that people find DRM onerous, restrictive, frustrating, and somehow unfair. (I often hear: "If I buy it, I own it and can do whatever the hell I want with it.") E-books are still sporting DRMit's the biggest knock against the Kindlebut for all intents and purposes, the DRM we knew and many hated up to and into 2009 is dead or on its way to the grave. DRM-free music was the turning point. The only question now is if the movie industry will eventually follow suit and what, if anything, Amazon will do about DRM in 2010.

Winners: Everyone.

Loser: No one.

NEW GAMING PARADIGMS

I am honestly excited about the innovation coming to gaming in 2010. We all got more than a glimpse of it in 2009, and nothing was cooler than . Microsoft's controller-free gaming experience is futuristic, other-worldly, andmost of allfun. Sony has a gesture-based controller for the PS3, too, though I worry that the 2009 iteration still needed wands. Nintendo started the motion-control craze but now appears behind. What will 2010 bring?

Winner: Microsoft. Project Natal is, pun intended, a game-changer.

Loser: Nintendo Wii. It can't change fast enough.

ROBOTS

Was there even one significant consumer robotics release in 2009from anyone? . iRobot hasn't released another game-changing product since the . I like the , but the robot floor mop has not sold nearly as well as iRobot's robot vacuum. 2009's other most interesting robot, the Pleo, was introduced 3 years ago and this year. It's been , but I am not optimistic.

Winners: Anyone who makes toys that only seem like robots.

Loser: iRobot. The company does amazing business with the military. It even unveiled a shape-shifting robot, but it is in desperate need of a big consumer hit.

Losers: Pleo. The robot, which is now on life support, has a new parent company.

Losers: Us. Your own personal Gigantor is just a pipe dream.

TWITTER

I've been wrong before, but never so spectacularly. I actually predicted that Twitter would be gone by 2011. Now, as a Twitterholic, I seriously wonder what I'd do without the micro-blogging service (visions of me standing, disheveled and rambling on some street corner, seem likely). I got hooked in 2008, and I think Twitter crash-landed in the consumer consciousness on when the pilot of American Airlines Flight 1549 made a spectacular, life-saving landing in New York's Hudson River. Many of us were tweeting about what we saw and learned about the event on TV. And then there was the TwitPic seen around the world. A Twitter member happened to be on one of the first ferries to reach the stranded aircraft. He snapped a photo and posted it to Twitter. This all led to some very rapid Twitter growth, and the social networking service achieving superstar status. In the process, it attracted some real superstars, such as . Things got a bit wonky after that, as expectations for what is really a fairly simple online service handily surpassed reality. There was the annoying race to one million followers between Ashton Kutcher and CNN. Other stars became enchanted with the service and then, unceremoniously, ignored it. Even so, Twitter cemented its position in the public consciousness and I am onboard for as long as it will have me.

Winners: Evan Williams and Biz Stone. These Twitter founders are responsible for my obsession.

Losers: Anyone who thought Oprah Winfrey would actually use Twitter in a meaningful way.

MP3 PLAYERS

Not only did Microsoft not back off from its rather poorly performing Zune business, it retrenched and unveiled the gorgeous . This is a lust-worthy device that works nearly as well as a third-generation . The biggest stumbling block: virtually no apps.

Winner: Microsoft. It stuck with it.

Winner: Apple. It still owns the MP3 market crown.

Losers: Virtually any other manufacturer trying to make a media player that matters. I'm looking at you Samsung, Sony, and SanDisk.

FASTER CELLULAR BROADBAND

This year of WiMax connectivity, and it was awesome. Now I have to live with the memories while I wait for a national WiMax or ClearWire network to make it to New York. Unless, of course, the suddenly becomes the standard.

Winner: Me! I got a chance to try WiMax.

Losers: AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon did not move fast enough to rewire their infrastructures.

There you have itmy biggest winners and losers for 2009. I know there are many highlights that I've left out (i.e. AMD vs. Intel, Intel vs. Nvidia, Microsoft vs. the EU, set-top boxes, Hulu, NBC and Comcast, etc.). You can discuss my choices and talk about all I missed in the comments section below.