New Full QWERTY, Touchscreen LG Android Phone Out

LG has announced the launch of its full slide-out QWERTY, Android laden touchscreen handset, the LG GW620 in India.

The phone comes in at a time when the likes of HTC and Samsung had launched quite a few handsets in the mid-range segment -all based on Android. The LG GW620 is expected to compete with the likes of the Samsung i7500 Galaxy and the HTC Tattoo - both of which are priced lower than the former.

Let's now see what the GW620 has in store for you. The handset, as mentioned earlier, happens to come with a physical QWERTY keyboard. This is probably the first handset in its price range to come with a full-fledged hardware QWERTY keyboard in India. The phone has a 3-inch capacitive TFT screen. There is a 5 megapixel camera at the rear capable of recording Videos as well. Video recording isn't impressive at just QVGA resolution. The camera supports geo-tagging, face detection and even has image stabilization features crammed into it. The phone supports playback of Divx files and comes with a document viewer as well. As of now, it runs Android OS, v1.5 (Cupcake). LG has incorporated its custom S-Class UI over Android on this phone."

The GW620 is 3G ready and tips the scales at 139 grams. A 3.5 mm jack is provided for music enthusiasts. The phone comes with 150MB of internal memory and can take microSD cards of up to 32GB. Connectivity options include GPRS, EDGE, WLAN, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, and v2.0 micro USB. FM Radio fans rejoice! Unlike the Samsung Galaxy, this one has FM Radio! It boasts of a powerful 1500 mAh Li-Po battery that endows it with a talk time of 7h 40 minutes. The standby time is 500 hours.

The phone is now on sale in India and is priced at Rs. 18,990.

See Also : Techtree.com

BlackBerry Storm 2 Review

According to a revelation made by Research in Motion (RIM), BlackBerry will make its latest phone the BlackBerry Storm 2 available in Australia from this month. The BlackBerry Storm 2 is seen as a major threat to the iPhone market and is expected to face tough competition from its rivals in the touchscreen category namely, HTC Desire, Samsung, Wave and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X 10.

The makers of BlackBerry Storm 2 after giving due consideration have made some minor changes in its predecessors, the BlackBerry Storm. The company did not make some of the major renewal adjustment in Storm.

However many minor changers in BlackBerry Storm 2 have led to a major impact due to which the phone offers a little more in comparison to its predecessor and many of its competitors. These changes have surely gone into making the device more user friendly.

Talking about the design, the BlackBerry Storm 2 now comes with a trendy touchscreen buttons with improved button control on the side. The battery lid and joints of the handset and been smoothed away to make the grip more handy and user friendly. It also avoids the annoying light that releases on the side of the screen. Hence these little innovative updates in the device are taken very positively making the Storm a visual delight.

Among the new specifications and features of BlackBerry Storm 2 are the stylish sleek look, touch support and interface with touchscreen. Another add on feature is built-in Wi-Fi and bigger keys set in horizontal mode to make sending email lot more simple, error free and fast.

The touchsreen in Storm 2 is now electronic rather than mechanical with a whole lot of features such as faster web browser, third party apps and another feature that helps select the text using 2 fingers and simultaneously with shift button where you can press to capitalize letters.

BlackBerry Storm 2 with its latest features and specifications is truly that phone which can give competition to iPhone. It has 3.2 MP camera with autofocus, flash and video recording that leaves iPhone far behind. Also the users can enjoy its multi tasking features by holding down the menu key and easily switch between many open apps. So, with a BlackBerry Storm 2 be sure that you have an icon in your pocket.

Read More...

Chrome Netbook OS; Tablet PCs; LBS; Open Source

2010 will undoubtedly be a year of technology innovation. In 2009, Twitter revolutionized the way we get news, it brought us closer to those who were a part of the news, almost making traditional media irrelevant. We don’t know who (or what) will be the Twitter of 2010, but below are a few predictions for the coming year.

Google’s Chrome Netbook OS will be a hit- Their OS will mostly be dependent on a Google Account. A Google Account opens up their full Google Apps suite, which includes email, calendar, word processing, and MS Office like functions. Google’s renditions of their current OS have been well received by the “blogosphere” especially it’s ability to fit on a 1GB flash drive. An OS that small is perfect for Netbooks and tablet PCs. The smaller footprint also gives the user more capabilities. A key part of the Chrome OS will be the Chrome brower (my browser of choice) and one that is noted for its speed and security. Google rarely has missteps and I don’t foresee that Chrome OS will be one of them.

Tablet PCs will dethrone the Kindle and the Nook – Recently, Barnes and Noble stated that they expected to ship 60k Nook handsets this year. Amazon stated that the Kindle was the largest gift ever sold this holiday season. Both devices are great at one thing – reading e-books. But who will be satisfied with a $250 E-reader, when a full fledged tablet PC can be had for $300? Many tablets on their way are going to be “subsidized” devices with 3G services. They will be capable of reading B&N e-books, Amazon e-books, and .pdf/.txt/.doc documents. Tablet PCs can offer the reading package side by side with Web-browsing, video and music playback, and video output to HDTVs/Monitors, or even use it as a full fledge PC when docked.

There will be no great Smartphone leaps in 2010 – Smartphones (iPhone/BlackBerry/Android/Windows Mobile devices) are in a bit of a rut. As telecom providers are rushing to roll out 4G/LTE (long term evolution) networks, there is not too much a cellular phone can do in the future that it cannot now. In my mind, the most limiting factor for mobile phones is bandwidth. Already they can be hacked to provide Wireless Access Points, use Google Voice, and be tethered to provide your computer w/ access. We already have Multi-Touch, OLED, 5MP, and other capabilities. Improved touchscreen interactions, standardizing tethering and VoIP will all be nice, but these are merely hacks, not innovations.

By :Bob Gourley

Source: http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1233371

Celebrity Smartphones That Made a Splash in 2009

The smartphone market is growing very healthily, as expected, 72% year on year. And 2009 is considered as the year of smartphones. When the Palm Pre arrived in June, the iPhone was its natural competitor. While Apple's most precious asset still continue to rule the market, the battle field has since become considerably more crowded. Google's Android operating system, new Windows phones from Microsoft, enhanced BlackBerry devices are also enticing the users. In addition, PC maker Dell has also join the hot competition this year.

Here is a list of some of the year's preeminent phones.

Apple iPhone 3GS

Apple's iPhone remains the smartphone to beat. Apple launched the new iPhone 3GS on 8 June 2009 as a follow up to its popular iPhone 3G. With this Apple remains at the leading edge of smartphone innovation with the iPhone 3GS. Apple's iPhone has transformed how the world thinks of cellphones. Phone companies and hardware-makers follows the iPhone's touchscreen interface, easy access to the Internet, and bustling App Store.

Its newest model, the 3GS, features voice controls, the ability to shoot and edit video, a built-in digital compass, landscape- and portrait-mode digital keyboards, a universal search capability, and faster application launch times. It's available in 16GB or 32GB.

The phone's processor runs at 600 megahertz, compared to 412 megahertz in previous models and packs 256MB of RAM, up from 128MB before. Apple claims that everything users do on iPhone 3G S is up to 2x faster and more responsive than ever.

Apple iPhone 3G

Apple's iPhone has become on of the world's most popular smart phones. The 8GB Apple iPhone 3G deserves a spot in its own right. Users get the 3.5-inch widescreen display with multitouch capabilities, e-mail, Web browsing and multimedia support, UMTS/HSDPA and GSM/EDGE radios, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, assisted GPS and, of course, access to Apple's App Store, with its more than 100,000 apps—for the lowered price of $99.

Motorola Droid

Android devices rocked the market in the second half of 2009, and the Motorola Droid has been called the best of them. Droid makes for a powerful tool, along-with Google’s smooth software, Verizon's killer network, and Motorola’s new-aged design. It runs Android 2.0, offers 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and features a 3.7-inch touch screen, a 5-megapixel camera that can geo-tag images, the ability to run several applications at once and voice recognition. It also has ties to a slew of Google Mobile Services, including Gmail, the Android Marketplace and Google Maps with voice-guided navigation. Google has launched an excellent and competitive smart-phone with many of the features that a modern user would think of.

Palm Pre

The June arrival of the Pre started a new chapter for Palm. Palm Pre features a tiny QWERTY keypad, the phone scores high points on messaging feature. From within one application, users can exchange texts with phone contacts and swap instant messages with friends who use either AOL instant messenger or Google Talk.

Pre has a 3 megapixel camera that lets users take photos in horizontal or landscape mode. The phone also boasts of strong multi-tasking features with the ability to have different applications open at the same time. Pre also supports copy-and-paste feature.

Palm Pixi

News of the Pixi leaked out as the Pre hype was quite high. Palm officially announced its second webOS-based smartphone, the Pixi, a slim and less-expensive smartphone with a visible full keyboard following the Palm Pre. It comes with Synergy, can connect to Sprint's 3G network and features a 2.63-inch multitouch screen, a dedicated QWERTY keypad, a 2-megapixel camera, universal search, GPS, a full HTML browser, and support for corporate and personal e-mail, IM, SMS and MMS. In November, some retail outlets lowered its price, which includes a service contract, to $24.99.


BlackBerry Bold

RIM has termed its new innovation as the 'boldest' smartphone launch in India. BlackBerry Bold measures 114mm x 66mm x 15mm and features a full-QWERTY keyboard.

Bold is also claimed to be the fastest BlackBerry on the market with 128MB RAM and 624 MHz processor. The phone packs 1GB on-board storage memory and has support for microSD/SDHC memory card slot for memory expansion of up to 16GB.

The phone features a host of multimedia capabilities including a 2 megapixel camera with video recording and an advanced media player for music, pictures and multiple format videos. The phone comes with a 3.5 mm jack, dedicated volume controls and dual speakers. It also supports video streaming.

Bold also has built-in GPS feature with BlackBerry Maps and support for location-based applications and services.

A-1 Technology is a mobile applications development firm focusing on Mobile software programming for iPhone,Android,Blackberry and A-1 developers are best in industry to offer best and cost effective Mobile Software programming .Visit a1technology.com to get the best services.

Smartphone Sales Up 12% In Q3

Global mobile phone sales reached 308.9 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a slight increase of 0.1 percent from the third quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales showed solid growth with more than 41 million units sold for a 12.8 percent increase from the same period last year.

"The third quarter of 2009 saw the announcement of many new mobile devices, including several Android smartphones ready for the holiday season in the fourth quarter, but hardware commoditisation and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for them to stand out," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

"Many devices will reach the market in time for Christmas, and mobile carriers will run incentives for consumers during the holidays. We expect sales of mobile devices in the fourth quarter of 2009 to show year-over-year growth," said Ms Milanesi.


"As many vendors and industry watchers call for a decrease in sales into the channel, our sell through data is showing that 2009 performance will be flat rather than down over 2008."

Nokia led the mobile market in Q3 with 36.7 percent of the share, followed by Samsung at 19.6 percent and LG with 10.3 percent market share.

Nokia also ranked at the top in smartphone sales with 39.3 percent of the market, followed by Blackberry maker Research in Motion with 20.8 percent and Apple with 17.1 percent.

"Smartphones continued to represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010," said Ms Milanesi.

Source:http://community.ecmta.org/blogs/news/archive/2009/11/13/smartphone-sales-up-12-in-q3.aspx

IMPACT OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY & MARKETING

Mobile technology is touching heights these days and the small device is offering a lot to the users other than making and receiving calls. With a new platform of smartphones in the market, this technology is giving a tough time to the other fields of advertising. The mobile advertising is an effective and more result-driven form of marketing. At times you are away from your computers but still have mobiles in your hands and it remains with you most of the time. So, your mobile is the ultimate platform for various companies to advertise their products & services. This phenomenon has given rise to a new form of marketing popularly known as mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing is blooming at a much faster rate as compared to the other forms of marketing. Though Internet marketing is on rise, mobile marketing is considered as a more cost effective, personalized, and immediate form of marketing. It is estimated that the world market for mobile marketing and advertising revenues will reach nearly $50 billion by 2014, up from about $29 billion today, growing at a five-year CAGR rate of nearly 12%. Europe and North America will grow at the fastest rates, about 16% through the period, to reach $16.3 billion and $12.4 billion, respectively. Many companies are using this new form of marketing to enhance brand awareness and increasing sales effectiveness. It has changed the ways of many users as they use their phones to search and sometimes, even, buy the products & services.

People often receive some kind of advertisements on their mobiles. These advertisements come in the form of SMS, MMS and Calls. You might be anywhere but you would keep on receiving such form of advertisements. SMS and messaging continue to dominate as the vehicles able to interact with the largest portion of the installed base for mobile phones. Mobile games used to represent the total sum of in-application advertising, but not any more. The surge in smartphone applications broadens the appeal for marketing messages inserted during program run time. Location is the mobile marketer’s best friend as it quickly becomes an integral component for precision audience targeting.

Most of the companies around the world are turning their marketing objectives towards the widespread mobile marketing. Companies are using all manner of lucrative methods to attract the buyers from various segments. If they are targeting kids, they can place their advertisements in mobile games or sponsored videos. One of the important things about mobile marketing is that it is the cheapest means of advertisements. Companies need not to invest huge amount of money for advertisements through mobile marketing.

2009 is expected to be a decisive year for mobile marketing spending as marketers worldwide move from disillusionment over their expected return from this platform to the realization that they can indeed enhance consumer brand equity via the targeted precision and customized experience that mobile affords over other media placements.

Microsoft OneApp for feature phones

Microsoft OneApp brings some of the most popular applications all together in one place: Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Designed for feature phones, OneApp puts a great new mobile experience easily within the reach of hundreds of millions of new users.


A great mobile application experience

OneApp appears on a phone as a single application that allows users to easily access all of their mobile apps. It dynamically launches just the parts of an app that a person wants to use, eliminating additional installation time and the need to store all of their mobile apps on their phone. OneApp enables users to easily customize their mobile experience.

The most popular apps—and more coming all the time

OneApp removes the need for people to visit several sites searching for the apps they want and hoping they work on their phone. With OneApp it’s all right there, and apps are automatically updated with no extra effort by the user.

Designed for feature phones

OneApp was designed from the ground up to make it easy for people to access mobile apps on feature phones with limited memory and processing capability. Its lightweight on-phone footprint of just 150 KB makes the installation easy and fast. OneApp also includes cloud services that help offload processing and storage from the phone to the Internet, improving overall performance. OneApp runs on a wide range of phones with more being tested all the time.

[Via:http://www.microsoft.com/]

Dell Mini 3i smartphone gets official outing in China

At last, the much rumored Dell cellphone has made its first official appearance. The 3.5-inch 360 x 640 pixel device with capacitive touchscreen was on display in China running the Android-based Open Mobile System (OMS).

The Mini 3i was on-hand as part of the launch of China Mobile's new Application Platform that offers music, video, and app downloads to mobile phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG, and apparently, Dell.

The candybar device lacks WiFi (or Chinese WAPI) and is strictly 2G GSM (no 3G) but does come with a 3 megapixel camera, microSD slot, Bluetooth, and 950mAh battery. Guess now we know why the early prototypes were met by a collective meh by mobile carriers earlier this year.

No idea when this will ship but it looks China-bound for at least the near future. A few more pics after the break.



[ Via : Engadgetmobile ]

Weaker World Mobile Phone Sales but Smartphone 27% Higher in Q2, Says Gartner

Worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 286.1 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 6.1 per cent decrease from the second quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units, a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year, representing the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market. The iPhone market share grew a staggering 375%.

"Despite the challenging market, some devices sold well as consumers who would usually have purchased standard midrange devices either cut back to less expensive handsets or moved up the range to get more features for their money," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. "Touchscreen and QWERTY devices remained a major driver for replacement sales and benefited manufacturers with strong, touch-focused midtier devices. However, the decline in average selling price (ASP) accelerated in the first half of the year and particularly affected manufacturers that focus on midtier and low-end devices, where margins are already slim."

The recession continued to suppress replacement sales in both mature and emerging markets. The distribution channel has dealt with lower demand and financial pressure by using up 13.9 million units of existing stock before ordering more. Gartner expects the gap between sell-in to the channel and sell-through to customers will reduce in the second half of 2009 as the channel starts to restock.


Source for images: Gartner (August 2009)

Via:http://www.wirelessandmobilenews.com

Main Story:http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=1124912&subref=simplesearch.

Top Mobile Phones

I was checking the list of top smartphone in Q2 2009 and there was only 1 android phone and over 4 blackberry. The list is as follows

1. BlackBerry Curve (83xx series and 8900)
2. Apple iPhone 3GS (both 16GB and 32GB versions)
3. BlackBerry Pearl (81xx series not including the Pearl Flip)
4. Apple iPhone 3G (8GB and 16GB versions)
5. BlackBerry Bold
6. BlackBerry Storm
7. T-Mobile G1
8. Palm Pre
9. HTC Touch Pro
10. HTC Touch Diamond

From what we can gather this is going to change a lot as a ton of Androids are expected to come out in the 2nd half of the year. From some quarters we have heard that there are over 18 Android phones in the pipeline. And the Mytouch which came out last week has had stellar reviews. My analysis is that in 2010 it will be a face off between Android and iPhone for the Consumer market and Blackberry of course has a lock on the Business market. And I am sure that Microsoft is going to come back competitive. They simply cant afford to ignore this market. The Palm Pre is a great OS, it simply needs some decent carrier and nice application and it should give the other smartphones a run for their money.

Let the competition begin!

Source: jkontherun

Smart-phones: Silver Lining of Declining Handset Market

The smartphone market is growing very healthily, as expected, 72% year on year. Changing consumer behaviors due to the ongoing global economic downturn is stimulating a renewed focus on smartphones, which analysts say would rule the declining handset market. Analysts expects sales of smartphones to grow 12-15 per cent in 2009. Smartphone offers advance capabilities, which could also be the reason for their raising popularity.

In terms of features, most smartphones support full featured email capabilities with the functionality of a complete personal organizer. Other functionality might include an additional interface such as a miniature QWERTY keyboard, a touch screen or a D-pad, a built-in camera, contact management, an accelerometer, built-in navigation hardware and software, the ability to read business documents in a variety of formats such as PDF and Microsoft Office, media software for playing music, browsing photos and viewing video clips, internet browsers or even just secure access to company mail, such as is provided by a BlackBerry.

One common feature to the majority of the smartphones is a contact list able to store as many contacts as the available memory permits, in contrast to regular phones that has a limit to the maximum number of contacts that can be stored.

The iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm's impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 approximately., so units sold since it was launched on June 6.

Apple's iPhone has become on of the world's most popular smart phones, just two years after entering the cellphone market. Its success has led rival phone makers to respond with formidable touch-screen devices of their own, including Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm and T-Mobile USA's G1 - which runs Google's Android software - and Palm's Pre.

Catching up in gaming segment, the introduction of devices like the iPhone, Android, and N-Gage has spurred domestic and overseas mobile games sales. Games sold through smartphone application storefronts accounted for 15 percent of all mobile games sales in 2008 in North America and Europe.

The innovation of competing devices and storefronts has the potential to boost the sagging mobile games market. Analysts find that growth in the operator-distributed mobile games segment has fallen to 7 percent in 2009, as compared to its peak of over 50 percent throughout 2004 and 2005.

Though it's believed that the new platforms will help grow the mobile games market as a whole, Android and Palm phone are likely to maintain their lead in the smartphone segment in the immediate future.

According to a report. "Whilst Nokia's N-Gage games platform and Google's application store Android Market also have the potential to grow the market for mobile games outside operators' portals".

The Java market continues to earn the largest revenue share in the mobile games industry. Smaller publishers will soon "reduce or abandon" development of games for release through operator-run portals, however, as smartphone platforms offer "a greater share of revenues, a more receptive audience, and a wider array of content."

Besides the game segment, Research In Motion is still by far the top seller of feature-packed smart phones, with a 55.3-per-cent share of the market, according to IT research giant International Data Corporation (IDC), but Apple is in hot pursuit. Whereas, Palm holds 3.9 per cent of the market.

iPhone outstrips Google's Android

Google's Android smartphone after rapid launching, has begun to fall behind the iPhone in a discerning measure of smartphone success. After keeping the iPhone's pace in the early five months on the market, Google’s Android has fallen behind the race set by Apple’s smartphone iphone in terms of its occurrence on the Web

Android was catching up the iphone idustry in the initial five months, with the launch of its first Android phone - the T-Mobile G1 but it soon fell off the pace in the sixth month, with the the iPhone set upon its launch. Meanwhile, the iPhone’s expanding Web presence shows no signs of slowing down. According to a report by Net Applications, page requests by the iPhone operating system continue to rise while requests from the Android operating system have flattened out.

Another data provided by AdMob which specifically measures advertising requests coming in from the Web confirms that requests from the Apple operating system have outpaced requests from any other smartphone sources, RIM and Android included.

The smartphone market is still in its early growth stage, however, and things may yet pick up for Android. Certainly, the initial buzz around new entry of T-Mobile with Android into the smartphone race is likely to give it strong initial sales. But as Google and T-Mobile have learned, sustaining the buzz may not be so easy, especially with Apple expected to introduce a new iphone, perhaps as early as next week.

Although the smartphone market is relatively young, the iPhone appears to be the smartphone that is actually being used by its purchasers, regardless of purchase stats. The iPhone’s position is not indomitable, but it continues to be very strong.

Mobile OS wars: Apple, RIM surge; Symbian still dominant

Gartner’s first quarter smartphone market share statistics show that Nokia’s Symbian remains the dominant mobile operating system, but is losing share to operating systems from Research in Motion and Apple.

To wit (see Gartner statement):

* Symbian’s first quarter smartphone OS share was 49.3 percent, down from 56.9 percent a year ago. But that’s up from the fourth quarter.
* RIM’s BlackBerry OS surged to 19.9 percent, up from 13.3 percent a year ago.
* And Apple’s iPhone OS was 10.8 percent of the market, up from 5.3 percent a year ago.

Gartner’s smartphone unit data echoes the stats from IDC a few weeks ago. Gartner said mobile phone sales were 269.1 million units in the first quarter, down 9.4 percent from a year ago. Smartphone sales were 36.4 million units, up 12.7 percent a year ago.

Read More Here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=18478

Also On: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=985912

Publisher on Iphone can make money a recent study indicates - lots of it

Yes, iPhone Apps Make Money
According to Flurry, iPhone applications can and do make money. Not all apps make it, of course, but those that do can actually make good money. A strong publisher with two titles a month can expect $10 million to $15 million in sales through the iPhone channel, if the titles are well-marketed, says the report.

But "well-marketed" is the key word here. The iPhone app industry is beginning to resemble the music industry with its "hit-driven" nature. One "hit" gets a developer on the map and gives them the chance to sell more apps. Successful apps often resemble successful songs: you need a good artist, a good producer, a strong distributor, and plenty of promotion.

Source: Readwrite - The State of the Smartweb

For Palm, Some Tough Acts to Follow

COMEBACK stories are irresistibly appealing, in business as well as in sports. But recovering from some strategic mistakes is awfully hard. A case in point is Palm’s failure to anticipate the threat that Apple posed to its core business.

Nearly two years since Apple introduced the iPhone, Palm has yet to release the Pre, the successor to its aging Treo. Much is riding on the Pre, which the company says will available before July 1: sales of Palm’s older smartphones have collapsed.

Last Thursday, Palm reported smartphone revenue for the quarter ending Feb. 28 declined to $77.5 million, from $171 million the preceding quarter. Its net loss of $94.7 million was its seventh consecutive quarterly loss.

“The Pre is a bet-the-company product,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.

A Palm spokeswoman said it is not the Pre, but Pre’s new operating system, WebOS, that is the bet-the-company offering. Palm plans to introduce additional products for WebOS, but has not announced any specifics.

Apple, meanwhile, has been bounding ahead. Last week, it previewed the third generation of iPhone software, which over all has attracted 50,000 companies and individuals who have registered as software developers. After only eight months, Apple’s App Store is stocked with more than 25,000 applications, the company says.

Palm was once in a similar position, boasting of an unmatched collection of third-party software in the 1990s, when the Palm Pilot brought computing power to the palm of one’s hand.

In the innovation race, Palm has fallen behind not just Apple but also others, like Google and Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, that have introduced products or software in response to the iPhone.

In January, Palm demonstrated the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show, where it impressed industry observers. The phone uses finger-flicking gestures, which the iPhone popularized, but it also has a full-sized qwerty keyboard, which the iPhone lacks.

Neither Palm nor Sprint, its exclusive United States distributor, has been willing to announce the Pre’s price. I spoke with Brodie C. Keast, Palm’s senior vice president for marketing, about how Palm planned to position the Pre.

“We don’t want to go head-to-head with Apple, and we don’t want to compete with RIM,” he said. The Pre, he suggested, could find a comfortable place between them: “If RIM is about your work life and Apple is about simply entertainment, then the Pre is about having a single phone for your entire life.”

But aren’t different flavors of the single essential phone already here? After all, the second-generation iPhone works nicely with corporate e-mail and provides security features demanded by I.T. departments. And BlackBerry now runs Facebook, Flickr and MySpace software.

One thing that the Pre will do that the iPhone does not is multitasking, running more than one program at once. Having such capability will be welcome, but we must await the chance to test the Pre in actual use. Last week, Apple said it would permit software developers to send notification messages to the iPhone, such as news headlines or Twitter updates, while a user is looking at another software application, but had decided not to add full background processing because it drained the battery unacceptably.

Pre’s success will hinge on consumer perceptions of not only the phone but also of Sprint. In January, Consumer Reports published the results of a survey for cellphone service ratings among its subscribers. Of the 22 cities in the United States in which Sprint is mentioned, Sprint came in last in 20 cities, and third among four in the remaining two.

Asked about the results, a Sprint spokesman said that “third-party analysis shows Sprint is making progress” and that this year it shared first place in the West region, as measured by the Call Quality Performance Study from J. D. Power & Associates. (Sprint remained in last place, alone or with others, in four of six regions in the same study.)

David Owens, a Sprint marketing executive, said that he understood that “consumers don’t perceive Sprint as having the best network,” but that if they were to “look at actual network performance, there’s a gap between perception and reality.” He said that his company’s 3G data network in the United States covered an area populated by 250 million people, which “is significantly larger than AT&T’s.”

(A spokesman for AT&T said that it plans by year-end to expand its 3G network to 370 metropolitan areas, populated by approximately 258 million.)

When the Pre is ready, Palm has a lot of catching up to do in achieving sales that will attract software developers in large numbers. Last week, Apple said that it had sold 30 million devices running iPhone software.

In 2006, the year before Apple unveiled the iPhone, Ed Colligan, Palm’s chief executive, brushed aside the notion that Palm had anything to worry about from new entrants like Apple. “I would just caution people that think they’re going to walk in here,” he said.

“We’ve struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he added. “PC guys are not going to just knock this out.”

Apple, the novice, didn’t merely walk into the business. It climbed a 10-meter platform and executed a back two and a half somersaults with two and a half twists in the pike position.

Palm’s turn.

By RANDALL STROSS

To get some more info :http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22digi.html?ref=business

Effect of 6 big smartphones players on primary market

Today there are 6 world famous smartphones iPhone , Android , BlackBerry Palm webOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian, in market.

The primary market–driver for smartphone till date was enterprises and small business. And it is expected that it will remain the same though iPhone has proved that there is a large market for smartphones.

This vibrant is a kin to the PC operating system market. Like Window Vista which has been approved by the consumers because they have already bought new PCs over the past two years. Because many businesses have ignored Vista and wedged with Windows XP, Vista has failed be the biggest OS in market. It has been labeled as a crash.

In the approaching conflict of the smart phone platforms, business will play alike function for making decision of the winners. Consumers will be driven by price, product design, and brand-recognition when buying smartphones while the businesses will be driven by platform issues like applications, security, and manageability.

Gatner has recently liberated its figures on the worldwide smartphone sales by operating system. It is said that iPhone market will not merge to 2 or 3 platforms like PC market. But there is no doubt that smartphone platform will be definitely be merging in the coming 3-4 years.

In records it has been mentioned that 162 million smartphones were sold globally in 2008. It is a record breaker actually because as per Informa it exceeded the unit sales of laptops for the first time. It is also said by viewing the Informa that smartphone sales will kick the global recession and will grow by 35% in 2009 and 38% by 2013.

By this type of information the vendors mostly get bullish and try to grab a piece of that market.