If you have followed our Big Picture column for the past year, you will know that as industry analysts and observers, we study this industry and the markets that compose it on a daily basis. Because of that, we often get asked about our thoughts concerning trends in the coming year. So we thought we would do a joint column sharing our predictions for the tech industry in 2013.

When the technology historians of the distant future look back on 2012, they may remember it as, above all, the year of the apology. Tech companies kept expressing regret for stuff: product flaws, privacy abuses, advertising deceptions and much, much more. Apple, Dell, Google, Microsoft and Nokia were among the industry giants that issued at least one apology. Even seemingly innocent bystanders such as Spike Lee and KitchenAid got sucked into the vortex of remorse.

Twenty-seven years after driving from New York City to Chicago in a $2,000 Honda Civic for a job that probably wouldn’t amount to much, Barack Obama, in better shape but with grayer hair, stood in the presidential suite on the top floor of the Fairmont Millennium Park hotel as flat screens announced his re-election as President of the United States. The networks called Ohio earlier than predicted, so his aides had to hightail it down the hall to join his family and friends.