If 2008 was the year of the Netbook, then 2009 as a whole can be described as the year of the e-reader.

Just 12 months ago, Amazon's Kindle was the only real player in field e-reading devices but now, at the end of 2009, consumers could read e-books on similar products such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, and Interead Cool-er, as well as the lesser-known Aluratek Libre.

Lots of companies that haven’t taken action in developing and releasing an e-reader up to now announced their intentions to invade that product category, which is still dominated by Amazon. Among those are: Plastic Logic with its Que; Spring Design with its Alex; Entourage, maker of the Edge; and Zen maker Creative and their project with experimental name MediaBook.

E-readers showed a strong presence but so did smartphones. E-readers and smartphones seemed uninfluenced by the recession. Market research experts from IDC announced that during the third quarter, vendors shipped a record 43.3 million of the devices, up 4.2 percent from last year's third quarter and up 3.2 percent from this year's second quarter.

A few specific devices, of course, grabbed the market share of smartphone headlines: the launches of Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, in particular got a great public attention. But the hysteric of their launch couldn’t be compared with the euphoria of iPhone launch.

As for laptops, they didn’t make great noise of the technology scene. For a few months, Dell tantalized users with a glimpse of its soon-to-arrive Adamo laptop; Sony announced a new Vaio X series, also less than half an inch thick and weighing 1.5 pounds; Asus debuted its own line of thin and lights; and Samsung got in on the action with its X3 ultrathin.

In the field of software innovation, Yahoo’s Widget Channel should be mentioned. Widget Channel is a software platform that house programs for browsing photos, using the Internet's abundant socially connected services, watching YouTube videos, or digging deeper into TV shows – and through which Yahoo will be able to show advertisements.

3D seemed to get closer to customers, invading directly in their homes. Still, some industry watchers, however, continue to argue that 3D will never be easy enough on the eyes.