2007: A year in review, June

The format war escalated; the iPhone arrives and Nintendo trounces Sony

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NEWS: 28 December 2007 11:00 GMT by Katie Scott

As the sun finally came out, the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war hotted up.

Toshiba made the gadget world headlines with the launch of a re-writable HD DVD drive for notebook PCs - the SD-912A.

And 4 days later, Toshiba's senior vice-president Hisatsugu Nonaka announced that the company planned to put HD DVD drives in all its new laptops.

Analysts immediately said that the move was a bid to counter Sony's decision to build Blu-ray drives into the PS3.

As the battle continued, the Blu-ray camp won a devastating coup.

Blockbuster announced it was to offer high definition DVDs in the Blu-ray format only at 1450 of its American rental stores.

It said the decision was down to two key reasons - customer preference and poor selection of films on HD DVD. Ouch.

As if this wrangling wasn't enough, another scuffle broke out in the phone market as HTC launched a rival to Apple's iPhone.

The HTC Touch, which has startingly similarities to the iPhone, but was apparently 2 years in the making, features a touchscreen display and will run Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 operating system.

Apple, however, seemed non-plussed basking in the increasing hype surrounding the launch of the iPhone.

Pics and specs were flashed on screen during a keynote speech by Steve Jobs, which had gadget lovers bouncing in their seats.

The build-up to the US launch continued with news of three service plans for the iPhone, set up by Apple and AT&T.

And then, on 29 June, the iPhone landed, causing snaking queues and frantic scrambles.

But in the UK, there was smugness as a breaking news report suggested that European iPhone enthusiasts would have access to a new 3G version of the phone - in a joint promotion with Vodafone, T-Mobile of Germany, and Carphone Warehouse. Meanwhile the Americans continued to line-up in the rain for their 2G version.

And finally, Nintendo claimed a huge victory over Sony.

The Wii and PS3 had gone head-to-head and, according to data from Enterbrain games magazine, Nintendo's console had outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 by a ratio of over 6 to 1 in June in Japan.

The Wii beat the PS3 4 to 1 in April and 5 to 1 in May, but would the trend continue?