Techcrunch is saying that the Google Phone will be more exciting than the Motorola Droid and even the following super Android phones that will come–Droid and the HTC Dragon will serve as a warm up to–how do we say, The One?

Google will not instantly go to manufacturing–the phone will be made by a big mobile company, perhaps Motorola again? Google is said to be in total control, though, as far as design and specs, and the phone will not carry any other brand but Google’s. The manufacturer could be Taiwanese or Korean, but the safe bet goes to either LG or Samsung. The Google Phone will be backed up by a major advertising drive. It’s going to be Apple vs Google after today and in the foreseeable future, and Google will have another solid source of revenue, besides their Adwords.

[source]

A new BlackBerry Theme Studio was also revealed to be in the works which will allow BlackBerry owners the ability to further customize the BlackBerry UI to their liking. All of these will be coming in 2010 but as to when it will specifically happen, it’s still anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, these are moves in the right direction which will, no doubt, make BlackBerry phones more appealing to consumers, and in turn, help RIM rake in more sales to improve on their already impressive smartphone market share.

[wirelessweek via unwiredview]

Aside from HTC, they are the only two other phone makers who managed to improve on their performance last year and by a significant margin at that. With a better featured iPhone 3G S and more affordable iPhone 3G to offer their fans, Apple now owns close to a fifth of new smartphones in the market. RIM, for their part, has made their QWERTY smartphones more accessible to the public with the introduction of the Curve 8520 and is also trying to tap the touchscreen generation with their latest full-touchscreen offering, the BlackBerry Storm 2.

The game is certainly changing, but hope is not lost for Samsung and company. With Android now all grown up and more mature, this new open OS will surely play vital role in helping the other phone makers stay competitive in the market.

[arstechnica via gizmodo]

Apple became the world’s most profitable handset vendor in Q3 2009. Fueled by strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years. What can Nokia do to regain the number one position?

Apple’s operating profit during Q3 2009 is at 1.6 billion surpassing Nokia’s $1.1 billion for the same quarter. Please note that operating profits are different from sales volume, and sales from the iTunes App Store may have spiked the revenues for the iPhone. Nevertheless, the iPhone’s profitability bode well for Apple’s future dominance in the mobile hardware industry.

[via gigaom]

He further discloses that they want to come out with a more unique product as opposed to another “me-too” netbook which almost every other player in the market has clearly done, including Nokia to a certain extent. Given that they’ve been toying around with the mobile computer concept since back in the day with the HTC Shift, we know they’re quite capable of coming out with a well-equipped and sophisticated netbook of their own. All we’re waiting for is for them put some serious elbow grease behind their aspirations and turn that dream into a reality.

[jkontherun via engadget]

Mobile Applications can be addicting, so says the numbers. But the numbers don’t mean any single application or type of applications, they mean all applications. The numbers came from Flurry, a mobile analytics company. I understand the addiction. It’s a lot of fun downloading and trying out various applications, especially when many of them are free. Flurry has tracked 40 million mobile users and about half a million of these users have used applications 100 times in a month each–that’s 3 times every day. These are app addicts! The trend is accelerating, which means the industry probably has to thank the iPhone and Steve Jobs for the rising popularity of mobile applications.

[via gigaom]

How about you guys? What do you think of this iPhone amnesty program? If the official carrier in your country offers up a similar iPhone amnesty program, will you sign up for it?

[china business times via unwiredview]

[nokia press release via unwiredview]

And to think we were all pretty stoked about the Apple iPhone finally coming to the biggest and most reliable wireless company in the U.S. Now here comes Verizon with an anti-iPhone ad (”everything iDon’t Droid Does”) that may just mean good-bye to a Verizon iPhone in 2010. It’s not just business when you’re taking a swipe against an Apple product. With the ad, Verizon also launched a possible product tagline or even a fullblown brand name: DroidDoes [site], which means of course that Verizon will put a lot of support behind the Google Android in future phone models.

So will Verizon go head to head with the Apple iPhone. Will iPhone continue its exclusivity with AT&T? Is Verizon insane making war with Steve Jobs?

[via blogs.nyt]

Don’t be surprised if one day you’ll no longer see Lite or Free versions of certain apps listed in the App Store. This is because Apple has finally lifted the restriction on free iPhone apps and in-app purchases. It used to be that paid apps where the only ones that were allowed to provide in-app purchases, but with this latest development, developers need not send a Full and Lite version of an app for listing at the App Store as they can already consolidate this as just one, a free iPhone app, with the option to purchase the full app later on. This will probably mean very little to majority of you iPhone owners out there, but let this just be a heads up that changes might be in the offing in the App Store as a result of this policy change.

[daring fireball via engadget]