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Zef Nikolla
facebook-public-offering
The past year was supposed to be a period of recovery, but for a lot of people it didn’t feel that way. Bookended by a deepening European debt crisis and the United States' own fiscal cliff, global markets and economies shuddered and jerked through 2012 trying to find an equilibrium. Even China, the growth story of the past decade, wasn’t immune to the economic drag, slowing its march toward dominance.
And yet in the white-hot world of mobile apps and consumer software, hard times seemed to be something that was happening to other people somewhere far away. Twitter arguably went mainstream in 2012, as did payments upstart Square, and the highly visual and addictive services from Pinterest and Instagram (until Instagram tried to change its terms of service). When Instagram sold for $1 billion to Facebook – the final value was $715 million due to a slumping Facebook stock price – "it’s a bubble" talk began in earnest.
Facebook’s IPO, the most anticipated market debut since Google, finally arrived and disappointed everyone. But the world’s largest social network wasn’t the only recently public tech company to struggle, just ask Zynga and Groupon. For the most part, the IPO class of 2012 had a tough time with investors. Apple was the opposite story, engaging in a virtual love-fest with Wall Street for three quarters of the year, and becoming the most valuable company on the planet.
As the year came to an end, old-line computer companies like Dell, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft showed their age. Dell and HP seemed increasingly irrelevant in the world of the iPad and iPhone. But even Apple, the company that launched the smartphone revolution, came under pressure. The iPhone 5 didn’t sell as fast as everyone had expected. The high end of the smartphone market was saturated, and Apple’s next big hit was still hidden from sight. Until next year.
Here are the highlights (and lowlights) of 2012 by the numbers.
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