Appreciated upgrades, sure, but little interms of headline-grabbing surprises (though to be fair, the iPhone 5 may have shown that the gadget world has relatively few of those up its sleeve these days).
Interms of sheer headline domination, the killing of Osama bin Laden was by far the story of the year, commanding 69% of the coverage in the week of May 2-8.
By contrast, inventory liquidation actually pulled down the headline estimate in the third quarter, making it a stronger quarter interms of real final sales than the fourth.