Smartphone unit sales are soaring, with sales almost tripling between 2004 and 2005, and increasing a further 50% in the first half of 2006 compared to the previous year.
Figures revealed by the high-tech market research firm In-Stat reveal that the Windows Mobile operating system has now managed to grab an equal slice of the US market share with smartphone big boys, BlackBerry and Palm.
Bill Hughes, an analyst at the research firm says that much of 2005’s soaring smartphone shipment growth was down to a run on Linux-based handset shipments in Asia at the end of the year.
However, he’s a bit sniffy about calling these phones – mainly from Motorola, NEC, and Panasonic – proper smartphones because they don’t possess the same high end functionality seen in Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm OS devices.
Although the Linux-based handsets are capable of running Java-powered applications added by users, Hughes reckons they should really be called ‘feature phones’ rather than smartphones.
Despite the spectacular sales, Hughes advised caution, pointing out that many smartphone users continue to lug around the very devices that smartphones are supposed to replace.
“Also, users have been slow to add new applications to their devices. Most users have only downloaded a few applications,” he added.
Other research by In-Stat found that business users given work phones were three times more likely to carry a second phone for their personal calls than other users.
Nintendo’s eagerly awaited 
The first punter to get his hands on the shiny new console was the time-rich Isaiah Triforce Johnson, who had sat outside a New York store for more than a week. 
Sony had shipped 400,000 PlayStation 3s in North American stores at the end of last week, but Nintendo boasted that it would have “five to ten” times as many Wiis available at launch, with an end-of-year shipping figure of 4 million units expected. 
LG’s flip-open VX9900 business phone has been scheduled for a November 27th US launch date on Verizon’s network. 
With the 262k color TFT LCD running at just QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution, we reckon users would have preferred the more capacious 640×200 offered by the Communicator. 
LG have gone to town on Bluetooth 1.2 wireless connectivity options, with the VX9900 supporting HSP (headset), HFP (hands-free), DUN (dial-up networking), A2DP (advanced audio distribution), SPP (serial port), AVRCP (audio/video remote control), BPP (printing) and HID (human interface device) profiles. 
As new media continues to challenge the traditional means of delivering music, video and other digital content, copyright lawyers can expect to get rich in the legal fall out. 
“We have been keeping UMG closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it’s unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation,” the statement said. 
Just over nine out of every 10 e-mails sent worldwide are junk, with a “spam tsunami” flooding inboxes with relentless junk advertising. 
Because each hijacked PC only sends out a relatively small amount of spam, they’re not detected by anti-spam networks and thus avoid being blacklisted on industry spamlists. 
Spamhaus blames much of the problem on ISP’s who either fail to stop the spammers or do nothing to stop them through mismanagement or good old fashioned corporate greed. 
The UK first case of Web-rage to go through the courts has reached sentencing. 
When Jones opened the door of his house – with a knife of his own, he was severely attacked. 
To defeat the pain of trying to enter text using an on-screen keyboard using your gaming controller to peck out a letter at a time, Blue Orb have released Texter, a small device that sits between the game controller and the game box. Using some general cleverness, the box will appear as a USB keyboard. 
We’ve not tried it yet, but looking at the usage diagrams it initially looks a little complex. That’s not to say that using it wouldn’t become easier after some practice. We’ve had a lot of experience in having to use different ways of putting text in, normally by having to review so many different mobile phones. Once you get past the initial pain of using the new method, some of them can be pretty fast.