It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone, but here we sit at the start of 2010 and a new decade. Let’s look back at some of the most interesting and important news items concerning the iPhone that we reported this year.

We learned last January that Skype was working on its own iPhone app, little did we know at the time how long it would be before we saw the app in person. Apple also allowed third party browsers into the App store for the first time early this year.

We first heard that Apple might let iPhone apps run in the background early in 2009. This was one of the iPhones biggest missing features according to many. February brought early grumblings that we might see a new iPhone in the summer. Early expectations were for several models, which turned out to be false.

Adobe announced early in 2009 that it was working on Flash for the iPhone. We all got excited at that, unfortunately flash is still not here. O2 announced in February that it has sold 1 million iPhones in the UK. Its success proved the iPhone was a global phenomenon.

Australian Jeweler Peter Aloisson went nuts in March and designed an iPhone selling for $2.5 million. The thing was covered in gold and diamonds. We heard in March that the new iPhone 3.0 OS would add MMS and cut and paste to the iPhone. Those things were sorely lacking on the iPhone to start with.

Later in March the cut and paste features along with other nice additions in OS 3.0 went official. The first word of the iPhone 3G selling without a contract came in March with a whopping price of $499-$599 depending on the model.

Apple announced in April that almost a billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store. That was just the start for the app store in 2009. Apple placed an order in April for 32GB chips foreshadowing the new iPhone 3GS models.

We started to hear grumblings in April that Verizon might get its own LTE version of the iPhone in 2010. We still don’t know if that will happen or not. TomTom unveiled the first full PND software and hardware system for the iPhone in June. The system turned the iPhone into a serious PND device with all the features you expect.

We learned in June that Steve Jobs was coming back to Apple after being away for health reasons since January. Jobs survived pancreatic cancer. The iPhone 3GS was fond to vastly outperform the iPhone 3G in 3D performance in June when benchmarked. We love us some iPhone 3GS around here.

In July Apple announced that 1.5 billion downloads had been made from the App store. That was another half a billion downloads compared to the numbers early in 2009. iPhone sales boomed in 2009 with the release of figures in July showing that sales had grown 626% year over year. Apple and AT&T landed in hot water with the FCC over the rejection of the Google Voice app from the App Store. The case brought to light the practices of those at Apple who wield the ban hammer for apps.

In August we learned that Apple owned 13.7% of the global smartphone market. That percentage continues to grow today with the iPhone rapidly moving up in popularity. AT&T was sued this year for lack of MMS on the iPhone. The feature was added in the 3.0 update but AT&T didn’t activate the feature because of the drain it would place on its often shoddy network.

There you have a sampling of the most important iPhone news items of 2009. Happy New Year and we look forward to reporting more iPhone news in 2010!