An odd lot, those Android modders. Clearly bored, one of them tinkered with Android a bit until it responded to the accelerometer all the way round. So now, whenever you turn your T-Mobile G1 round, the display turns too. But not just between portrait and landscape modes – all they way round, turning your homescreen completely upside down.

Which, if you find the G1’s chin mildly annoying, is quite handy, as it puts the chin at the top!

Completely useless, but a marvellous example of just how customizable Android is.

(thanks, as ever, to @terminal7 for the pic).

With Apple attempting to sue the pants off HTC and in the process starve the mobile Web from any form of competition, innovation, and, perish the thought – choice, Google has waded into the battle by backing its Android OS and manufacturers to the hilt.

In response to Apple’s pitiful law suit, Google said:

“We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

This is cracking news. Apple’s actions, both with its lawsuit against HTC and its over-zealous censorship of the app store, are appalling. Mobile choice in the US has always been restricted, and competition and consmuer choice has suffered as a result. The US mobile phone market has traditionally been at least a year behind Europe as a direct result.

Just when all that looked to change, with Google, Apple and Palm leading the smartphone challenge and looking to dominate the next wave of mobile devices, Apple at a stroke aims to kill the innovation stone dead. Its lawsuit aims to stop HTC, and, by extension, Android, from being sold in the US.

If they succeed, then the only smartphones left in the US will be the iPhone and Palm. Nokia has no carrier deals in the US for its high-end phones; Blackberry is too business-oriented to be classed as a smartphone in the same way the iPhone and Android phones are; and the most successful Windows Mobile phones are made by HTC!

So if the US wants to keep on seeing restricted consumer choice and limited innovation in its mobile phone market, then let Apple do its worse.

I’m not sure what’s more ironic: That Apple under Steve Jobs turned into the very Big Brother figure its original iconic Apple Mac adverts sought to destroy; that the most capitalist market in the world is the least free as far as mobile phones are concerned; or that Google, the one company people associate most with being the next Big Brother with all the data it has on its all, is actually the White Knight in the story!

How weird the mobile world can be at times!

[Source: Engadget Mobile, HTC.cc]

Back in 2001, Microsoft laid siege to the Web. Thanks to its dominant desktop position, it dominated the browser market with IE6 and ultimately killed off its competitors. The result was years of stagnation, a willful disregard of Web standards, and a Web development environment that actively discouraged any innovation throughout the Noughties.

Today, Apple is doing the same to the mobile Web. Not by a dominant market position, but by a lawsuit for patent infringement that it’s thrown at HTC.

And not just any old lawsuit. If they win, Apple will get a permanent injunction against HTC, which will bar them from importing or selling touchscreen smartphones in the US, along with triple damages and maximum interest for all such smartphones they’ve already sold.

In other words – the end of HTC, the end of Android, and the end of any innovation in the smartphone market.

This is is huge. This has the potential to be more damaging than Microsoft ever thought of being.

Read on for how Apple is threatening the mobile Web in the most aggressive attack yet made.

Apple: Stifling innovation in hardware

Last year, Apple filed suit against Nokia, alleging infringement of its iPhone patents. Today, it’s filed a new suit against HTC, alleging the infringement of 20 patents related to the iPhone.

Steve Jobs is quoted as saying:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Unfortunately, the technology Jobs is talking about is the touchscreen smartphone. According to TechCrunch, Apple thinks it owns the concept of the whole touchscreen smartphone, not just the look and feel of the iPhone, and wants any other touchscreen smartphone manufacturer to pay Apple for every touchscreen smartphone they make.

If they win, then all other smartphone makers will be hit with the same lawsuit. The result will be the smothering of innovation in the smartphone market, as manufacturers either have to dance around Apple’s extremely broad patents, or pay a new Apple tax for every touchscreen smartphone sold.

But it’s not just hardware that Apple is clamping down on – it’s software too.

Smothering innovation in mobile software

The app store is in danger of becoming a censorious joke. Apple has always retained the right to block apps that don’t meet its strict standards. Often, its censorship has been wildly arbitrary, permitting some apps while blocking virtually identical ones for seemingly random reasons.

But now its censorship is being implemented retroactively with new interpretations of its rules that block apps (and ultimately the jobs of developers) that have been on sale for months or sometimes years.

Recently, Apple banned apps containing what it claimed was suggestive material. Most of these apps simply contained women in bikinis. Regardless off all the arguments about infringing on freedom of speech, the biggest problem with Apple’s decision was the arbitrary way they implemented it. Many apps were banned. Identical apps by Sports Illustrated and Playboy were not.

It’s not the content that’s the problem, apparently, it’s the fact that the apps are by companies that are not well know, where as Sports Illustrated and Playboy are well known.

Eh?!

Now Apple have gone further by banning apps that “contain minimal user functionality and [which] will not be appropriate for the App Store.”

So at a stroke, all those apps that are just fun (such as iFart) are under threat.

Apple as the new mobile Big Brother

Apple has become the new mobile Big Brother, the bully in the playground that’s seeking to impose its own contradictory standards on everyone else seeking to innovate or simply to make a living developing software.

If Apple succeeds in imposing a hardware Apple tax on all smartphones, the damage to innovation and the resultant cost to the consumer will be severe.

Already the damage to innovation in the App Store is to starting to bite, as sales of competing Android phones explode, as do the number of Android apps as developers see the Android app market as a much safer, and less censorious one to develop for.

If Apple cripples this by going after the Android manufacturers with its patents, then the future of the mobile app market is terrifying. A future full of iPhones, with no competition from other manufacturers, and Apple free to determine at will which apps succeed and fail.

If you thought Google was Big Brother, then think again. Android could just be the saviour of the open mobile world!

The lawsuit in full

The list of patent infringements that Apple’s claiming is as follows:

• The ‘331 Patent, entitled “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States,” was duly and legally issued on April 22, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
• The ‘949 Patent, entitled “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics,” was duly and legally issued on January 20, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘949 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit B.
• The ‘849 Patent, entitled “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image,” was duly and legally issued on February 2, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘849 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit C.
• The ‘381 Patent, entitled “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display,” was duly and legally issued on December 23, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘381 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit D.
• The ‘726 Patent, entitled “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device,” was duly and legally issued on July 6, 1999 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘726 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit E.
• The ‘076 Patent, entitled “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices,” was duly and legally issued on December 15, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘076 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit F.
• The ‘105 Patent, entitled “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality,” was duly and legally issued on December 8, 1998 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘105 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit G.
• The ‘453 Patent, entitled “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor,” was duly and legally issued on June 3, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘453 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit H.
• The ‘599 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Graphic System,” was duly and legally issued on October 3, 1995 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘599 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit I.
• The ‘354 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods,” was duly and legally issued on July 23, 2002 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘354 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit J.

Nokia fans have been sorely disappointed this week as a raft of news from other manufacturers has come streaming out of Barcelona, whilst all Nokia had to talk about was their forthcoming alliance with Intel with the Meego platform.

Fear not, though, Nokia fans, for news reaches us that the company is now working with old foe Qualcomm on a new handset that will be powered by the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

OK, so this would have been more impressive this time last year, when Toshiba announced the first mobile phone to use the same processor, but at least it means we’ve finally got a fast Nokia on its way!

[Source: IntoMobile]

Finally, we have a tonne of other Android news on unofficial Android day, including:

Inbrics will be launching the Inbrics M1 at MWC 2010 next week. The M1 is a 3.7″ Android phone with slide out keyboard, and what Inbrics are calling a “convergence controller”, which will push data to any device the user chooses. Intriguing!

Other news includes:

• Google have been working on a Babel Fish voice translator, which converts voice spoken in one language into a synthesized voice spoken in a completely different language. If they can get this to work, it could be huge, particularly if they limit it just to Android phones.
• Play.com is allegedly stocking up on a load of Google Nexus Ones, ready to start shipping them in the UK (hooray!). Unfortunately, they’ll cost £600, which is £150 more than you can import them for yourself from Google’s US-based store.
• Motorola DROID/MILESTONE owners now have multitouch the same as Nexus One owners, and will be getting Android 2.1 starting from this week. The new update will turn their DROID into something very similar to a Nexus One, which means a seriously tasty smartphone with physical keyboard – mmmmm!

Phew! That’ll do for now! All this Androidery’s tired me out! I’m off to make sure the Megan Fox video is still working OK ;)

This year, we’ve been treated to the Google Nexus One, HTC Supersonic, Nokia X6 (out today), Sony Ericsson Vivaz and X10, and a pair of Palms, to name just some of the highlights.

And it’s still only January!

I say this because today, the whole mobile phone and gadget industryies are battening down their hatches ready for the big one – the Apple Event of the Year, where Steve Jobs will be announcing not just that Apple tablet thing, but also (possibly) the iPhone version 4.

Consequently, there isn’t a peep to be heard from the rest of the mobile phone industry, as they know any new announcement now would be lost in a blizzard of hype in seconds!

It’s exciting stuff, though. Will the iPhone 4 herald a new chapter in the iPhone’s history, able to take on the new challenge threatened by Android? Or will it just be an incremental upgrade, with the Apple Tablet taking centre stage? Will Steve Jobs even mention the iPhone, for that matter (of course he will!)

We’ll know tomorrow at 6pm GMT. Stick with us, as we’ll be live-blogging the event again (albeit from across the pond!), focusing on the mobile news. We’ll also be tweeting all the important juicy bits, so follow us if you can’t make it to your PC in time.

After all this excitement, surely next month will be calmer (no wait, next month’s MWC 2010!!!)

Spotify have confirmed they have no intention of developing a Spotify app on the Maemo platform. This is bad news for owners of the Nokia N900, and shows one of the dangers of choosing a phone with a limited market share.

As I’ve been saying for ages, only the most popular mobile phone platforms will attract developers, and the platforms with poor developer support will face a death spiral of decreasing demand as few companies develop their apps on it – which in turn feeds reduced demand as no-one wants a smartphone with no apps!

With so many app stores competing for developers, the market’s become fragmented, and some platforms simply won’t attract enough developers to survive in the long term.

Maemo isn’t dead yet, but Nokia are going to have to pump some serious money into the platform soon to give it a future. Deciding on either Symbian or Maemo would help, as having two competing platforms from the same company is simply crazy!

Maemo at least is open enough to encourage a home-brew open-source version of a Spotify app (which requires you to compile the code on your N900, so isn’t exactly for the non-teccie!), but it’s still a worrying time for fans of Nokia’s new smartphone platform.

Other platforms on the “at-risk” register must include Windows Mobile and Symbian, while Samsung’s Bada, which hasn’t been released yet, has some seroius work ahead of it if it’s to avoid Maemo’s fate and have big-name app companies stress that they’re not going ot develop for it.

Nokia will drop Symbian on its top-end N-Series phones in favour of Maemo – that’s the latest rumour flying around the tech blogosphere after a marketing manager at a Nokia N900 meet-up said yesterday that Symbian “…would not be used on N-Series between now and 2012.”

This is huge news. Nokia have spent a fortune on Symbian, both in extending the operating system, and in buying Symbian – the company – for 264 million Euros back in June 2008. To admit that Maemo will be used in its high end phones in the future is a tacit admission that Symbian has fallen behind in the smartphone race and can no longer support the kind of features that smartphone users have come to expect.

More details after the jump.

This shouldn’t really come as a shock. Symbian’s limitations for smartphones were evident in the Nokia N97, which offered a poor experience compared to the competition. When the Maemo-based N900 was launched recently to critical acclaim, the writing was on the wall for Symbian. If Nokia, the company that’s taken Symbian further than anyone else, can’t create a decent smartphone using it, what hope does anyone else have?

Samsung proved this two weeks ago by announcing that they were dropping Symbian, too, in favour of Windows Mobile and Android.

Nokia will still be using Symbian in the future for some of its mid-range phones – but for the N-Series, it’s Maemo all the way.

[Source: The Really Mobile Project]

Nokia has released a video showing what it sees the mobile phone of 2015 will be like. It won’t be like this pic – that’s just a concept phone from last year – but it will be shiny, sleek and sexy. Perhaps the biggest change from today’s phones will be the way it integrates with the world around it through services and software. To enable this, Nokia are currently working on a huge range of services and software that will help your device learn about your preferences and present them whenever you need them.

Hang on a minute, though – that would have sounded nice and futuristic back in 2007, but anyone who’s used an Android phone, iPhone or Palm Pre recently will instantly be familiar with this scenario. That’s not a vision of the future, that’s the vision of a touchscreen smartphone with Google’s apps installed!

Check out the video yourself after the jump and see what you think.

Nokia’s 2015 vision in brief

Nokia’s vision includes:

• storing all your information in a “data cloud”
• paying for services and receiving cash via a Nokia payment service
• letting Ovi (Nokia’s app store) recommend new customers for any special data you’ve collected
• a phone with built-in projector
• augmented reality handsets, where people’s details are overlaid on the screen whenever you point the phone at them

All of this seems reasonable enough. However, most of this is going to happen a lot sooner than 2015.

For example, my G1 Android phone has an app that already features augmented reality. Called Wikitude, I simply point the camera at an object, and an icon pops up showing me a photo of it. Touch the photo, and I’m taken to Web sites (usually Google or Wikipedia) that tell me more about it, along with pictures and other info. It’s not that great a leap to go from places to people’s faces.

Google already stores all of your data in the cloud – its own data centers. That’s what makes accessing Google via your phone so incredibly useful. Better still, because your GPS-enabled phone knows where it is in space and time, what direction it’s pointing in and even how fast it’s moving, the apps on an Android phone can be super-personalised – just check out the new Google Maps, Street View and Latitude features on Android 2.0, coming soon in the Motorola Droid.

As for phones with projectors – Nikon already sell a camera with a built-in projector, so it won’t be long before they’re squeezed into mainstream mobile phones.

The whole world’s not Nokia

I also take issue with Nokia providing all of these services itself. Only Apple and/or Google has the power to achieve this – Apple because it’s brand is loved so people won’t mind giving it so much control over their lives; and Google because its technology is so good it’s just too damned useful not to!

But Nokia? Great with handsets, but as their Comes with Music service has shown, people just don’t see them as a company offering services or apps.

In short, it’s a good vision of the future of mobile phones, but it’ll all happen by 2011 at the latest. I also think Nokia should open up a bit and not to try to take on the world! It doesn’t need to control everything – open up the phones and services, let other people develop apps on an open system, and stop trying to take on the likes of Apple and Google.

And realize that if it sticks to its vision for 2015, it’ll be four years late to the party when it eventually arrives!

Just my opinon. Feel free to add yours in the comments below.

Nokia has released a new teaser video of its Maemo mobile operating system. Maemo is the software that powers the Nokia N900, which has just been released. I saw a preview of the N900 a few months ago, and was very impressed, particularly when comparing the N900 to the N97.

However, I was confused back then as to why Nokia was effectively competing with itself with two mobile operating systems (the N97 uses Symbian), and I’m even more confused with this video – it’s not a teaser for the N900, it’s a teaser for Maemo!

Check the video out for yourself after the jump – and see if you can make sense of it!

Is this a sign that Nokia are refocusing their smartphone efforts around Maemo rather than the ageing Symbian? It would certainly make sense. Samsung have just announced that they’ll no longer be using Symbian in their smartphones, which is a huge blow to the platform. Whether Nokia are prepared to give up on Symbian as well is any one’s guess (just like what the video actually means!), but it at least shows that Nokia’s firmly committed to Maemo.

Garmin have announced that they’re working on an Android-based GPS smartphone for 2010.

Garmin entered the mobile phone market a while back with its much-delayed Nuvifone. Unfortunately, the delay meant that Garmin missed the boat somewhat with GPS phones, with first Nokia and then Google stealing a march on the company with a plethora of GPS-based phones that all worked rather well.

More details after the jump.

Of course, Garmin went the extra mile, adding its superior knowledge of navigation technology and turn-by-turn sat-nav experience to the mix, but the Nuvifone itself wasn’t as much a success as it could have been.

Android to the rescue – again!

With an Android-based Nuvifone, though, Garmin may have found a platform that can enable their navigational nous to really shine through.

Android was designed from the ground up to encompass a range of sensors, and with its completely open architecture, any manufacturer is free to develop it in whatever way they wish.

For Garmin, this means complete turn-by-turn Sat-Nav functionality in a touchscreen phone that knows where it is in time, space, orientation (north, south, east or west), and altitude. That’s a powerful combination!

No details yet on the exact spec of the Android Nuvifone, but if the phone succeeds, Garmin can add its name, along with Motorola and Sony Ericsson, to an increasingly long list of phone manufacturer that Android has helped save from the brink.

[Source: Se-nse.net]

I’m pleased to announce that MobileMentalism is now sitting nicely in a brand new home. After much problems over the past month or so, the site has moved to a new server. More powerful and more reliable, so no more downtime, and a much faster response time. I’ll also be making more tweaks to get the site working even faster over the next few days.

There may be a few glitches to be ironed out, but they’ll be sorted out ASAP.

So enjoy, folks, have a good look round the new slicker site, and you can look forward to some seriously cool posts – starting tomorrow!

Remember the HTC Touch Dual, one of the first Windows Mobile smartphones that actually looked good? The keywords here are “Windows Mobile”, as it turns out you can also run Android on it, too – and not just any old Android, but a version of Android with HTC’s own shiny new Hero interface.

These pics show just such a weird chimera, with the HTC Touch Dual booting up under Linux and then the familiar HTC Hero interface bursting into life.

Impossible? No, not a bit of it. It’s one of the benefits of the openness of Android, the hackability of HTC’s phones, and the almost obsessive devotion to getting Android on virtually every device out there by the members of XDA-Developers.

Sure, it sounds geeky, but if you have an old HTC Touch and want to put some extra life into it, go ahead and install Android on it – jusrt don’t ask me how ;)

More pics and details after the jump.


These pics come from my brother Dave, who’s previously installed the HTC Hero interface on the G1. Now he’s managed to squeeze Android onto his old HTC Touch, following the not-exactly-easy instructions on the XDA-Developer’s forum.

If you want more details on how this works, talk to Dave (@terminal7).

Hmmm, Android running on Windows Mobile? Anyone brave enough it to port it to the iPhone?!

We’re just about to hit the avalanche fo mobile phone press releases from MWC 2009 tomorrow. Making sure they still get a bit of attention before the noise ratio rockets skyward, Palm have released a preview video of the new Palm Pre smartphone.

The Palm is as close to an iPhone in terms of functionality, usability and interface, as it’s possible to get without breaking any patents. Every time I see it, I’m more impressed. Check out the vid and see what you think.

[Source: IntoMobile]

During a day in which Sony Ericsson released worst than expected figures for 2008, Sony haven’t exactly helped matters by allegedly refusing to allow Sony Ericsson to put the sacred PlayStation brand on a new range of gaming phones.

Rumours involving Sony’s snub have being circulating for sometime, but apparently Sony Ericsson made a formal proposal to the Sony board in December for access to the PlayStation brand that was categorically refused. Since then, relations between the two companies have become increasingly strained, leading some to wonder whether Sony is preparing to walk away from the partnership.

The announcement by Sony Ericsson of losses reaching EUR 129 million for the last quarter of 2008 (or a loss of EUR 262 million if you include restructuring costs) has only added fuel to the fire.

Sony and Ericsson set up Sony Ericsson to harness the best of each other’s core strengths: Ericsson’s network expertise and Sony’s consumer electronics expertise. So far this partnership has resulted in a number of successful ranges based on core Sony brands, such as the Walkman and CyberShot brands, and the Bravia TV brand in Japan.

The PlayStation brand is one brand too far, though.

A Sony spokeswoman said “In the past, we have been keen that our product proposition lives up to brand promise, and we feel at the moment the technical specs are not high enough to put such a prestigious brand on a phone.”

The Times recently reported that the company was on the verge of a “..series of sacred cow-slaying measures”, with “…with the lion’s share of the changes imposed on Sony’s domestic Japanese operations in the form of factory closures and the abolition of several major divisions.”

Since the article, there has been all sorts of speculation as to what sacred cows Sony will slay, with some even suggesting the PlayStation itself (or at least its portable version, the PSP) might be for the chop.

However, with Sony Ericsson’s recent disastrous sales figures and a rift between the two companies, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sony Ericsson be the biggest victim in Sony’s impending corporate restructuring.

[Source: The Times, MobileToday]

2008 has been the year of the smartphone, but we ain’t seen nothing yet! With Android, the iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and yet more smaller players all fighting amongst each other to be crowned king of the smartphone, we consumers are about to be swamped by a torrent of new devices fighting for our hard earned pennies.

While that sounds good at first glance, dig a bit deeper and you’ll see a problem emerge – four competing and completely non-interoperable operating systems equals four key platforms for software developers to choose from when building their apps.

Unless the developers have large teams and large pockets, they’re going to be forced to choose one or two platforms at most, meaning if you choose a platform that becomes unpopular (Windows Mobile ), then you”ll be out of luck when it comes to buying the fancy app you saw on your friend’s iPhone.

Or worse, you might move from an iPhone to an Android phone, only to find that you have to purchase all the apps you bought for your iPhone all over again, as they won’t work on Android. The nightmare of the fragmented platform looms large, just as it has done for years in the PC market and console market.

What can be done, and who can solve this conundrum? Well, Ericsson, apparently!

Ericsson have proposed a new software initiative that aims to ensure all applications developed on one platform will work on all the others. Effectively, they’re proposing the development of a unified framework based on Java. A version of the framework will be implemented for each platform, but as each version has a common set of APIs, application developers need only write to this uniform platform, rather than the fragmented platforms that are out there now.

This is ambitious to say the least, not just technically, but politically as well. The reason for the fragmentation is vendor lock-in – if you’ve bought 100 iPhone apps, you’re unlikely to switch allegiance to Android, for example, as your apps won’t work, and that’s just the way Apple wants it!

It also somewhat misses the point of all these smartphones. They’re all designed around the concept of the mobile Web, bringing the desktop Web experience to the smartphone. As such, all each platform needs is a decent Web browser, support for JavaScript, AJAX and Flash, and you’re done – one common platform, with all applications being served up by a Web server, rather than being written to each device. You now, like what’s happening on the desktop these days!

Just a thought!

[Source: EETimes]

Sony Ericsson has just announced it’s joined the Open Handset Alliance and will develop a new mobile phone based on the Google Android operating system. There had been rumours about this for some time, but now it’s official, and 2009 should see the introduction of a new Sony Ericsson Android phone.

“Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, CVP and head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson.

“We believe Sony Ericsson can bring a wealth of experience in making consumer focused multimedia handsets with new user experience to the Alliance drawing on the successes of the Walkman and Cyber-shot sub-brands. Sony Ericsson is a strong supporter of open operating systems and we believe the Open Handset Alliance offers an exciting opportunity for a new and unique user experience only Sony Ericsson can deliver.”

Membership of the Open Handset Alliance will complement the company’s existing Open OS strategy which is based on the Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.

That’s a lot of operating systems, though, which is sure to complicate the development process. At least one of those platforms will have to go, as it makes little commercial sense to support all three.

Samsung and Motorola are already developing Android phones, so with Sony Ericsson now on board as well, that leaves only Nokia and LG from the big five mobile phone manufacturers.

Not content with the Nokia N97 that was announced on Tuesday, we hear news that Nokia have even more announcements up their sleeve. The first is a certainty – actually, they’ve already announced it! – the second, is a little more unclear!

The first is something of a shock – it’s the Nokia Home Music system, a dedicated wireless music streamer pitched directly at the Logitech Squeezebox.

Seems Nokia’s going into the music business in a big way, and we can only assume they’re trying to usurp the dominance of Apples iTunes store (and thus sever peoples reliance on the iPhone) with an enhanced version of their Comes With Music music download service.

Either that or Nokia also has 10% time just like Google, and one of their engineers came up with something bloody amazing!

The second announcement rumour comes from Scoble, who has either got his days wrong, or knows something we don’t!

More details after the jump.

Writing early on Monday 1st Dec., he said “[A] Nokia executive met me and bragged that the Internet has no clue what they will announce this week. I asked what about the touch screen cell phone that I’ve seen rumors about? He said that no one had gotten it right yet. The announcements are on Wednesday morning (it’s early Monday morning as I post this) so we’ll have to wait to see what they announce” (my emphasis).

Later on, he asks “…what do you think Nokia is going to release on Wednesday? Will it take ‘touch’ and ‘experience’ leadership back from Research in Motion and Apple?”

That’s a lot of Wednesdays! Today’s Tuesday (well, it’s not, its 12:38am when I’m writing this, so technically it’s Wednesday, but you know what I mean!), and the N97 has already been announced. If Scoble’s right, and there are more announcements to come on Wednesday morning, then Nokia must have something even bigger up their sleeves than the world’s best Facebook phone and a new Home Music Streamer!

Or, Scoble just got confused with time zones and confused Wednesday with Tuesday!

[Source: Scoble, MediaMentalism]

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble has got the inside scoop on Nokia’s new phones that will be shown off in just over 7 hours time. Writing on Twitter, he says “What I’ve seen tonight from Nokia has, indeed, not been seen yet on the Internet and was pretty surprising to the bloggers.”

Now if that doesn’t get you all excited, nothing will!

If you thought camera phones were old hat, think again. Samsung has announced that its shifted 10 million 5 megapixel+ camera phones so far this year, and expects to ship 13 million by the year’s end.

Gartner, meanwhile,has forecasted that 110 million 5 megapixel+ camera phones will ship globally next year, ramping up to 330 million by 2011.

Part of this is obviously to do with the fact that a high quality camera phone is desirable in its right, but it’s also due to the decreasing cost of developing such phones. In 2007, for example, 5 megapixel+ camera phones were extremely expensive high-end affairs, with the Nokia N95 leading the way. In 2008, 5 megapixels has reached the high mid-range market, with 8 megapixels becoming the norm for the top-end phones.

This trend is set to continue, as Nokia is expected to include a 5 megapixel camera on nearly all of its phones starting from next year. If it does do this, then Gartner’s figure looks an absolute certainty.

Who’d have thought in an age of TV phones, Sat-Nav phones, video phones and other such wonders, the humble camera phone would still be such a huge sales driver?

[Source: Yonhap News