7. Intel
The chip giant has had a pretty trying year. 2009 was the year its domination of the CPU market finally caught up with it and the objections of its much smaller competitor AMD were finally met with a sympathetic ear by the world's regulatory authorities.
Intel has already had to shell-out billions in fines and settlements and the fun's not over yet. Furthermore, in order to bring this unwelcome attention to an end, Intel will have to alter its business practices and potentially allow competitors like AMD and NVIDIA to gain ground.
Even Intel's victory in maintaining its massive CPU market share has a Pyrrhic quality to it. The one growing PC form-factor in the past year has been the netbook, which uses Intel's Atom processor. The problem is, Atoms cost far less than pretty much all its other CPUs and, furthermore, netbooks are making end-users question whether they even need that much power anyway.
A positive can be derived from this trend if Intel is successful in delivering on its low-power roadmap and eventually making a CPU that can be used in mobile phones. Intel was actually one of the first companies to publicly stress the importance of the mobile Internet and its 2010 will be defined by its ability to put its legal troubles behind it and make inroads into the smartphone market.
