Global sales of handsets are set to reach 1.5 billion in five years, according to a new report by IT research firm Analysys.
The “Evolution of Mobile Handsets to 2011 and Beyond” study forecasts that mobiles will evolve into three broad categories, comprising voice-centric, converged-function and specialist handsets.
After imbibing deeply on a large bowl of buzzwords, report author Dr Yanli Suo-Saunders exploded into a frenzy of tech-speak, “The handset market is transforming as traditional voice-centric devices diversify with the incorporation of a range of multimedia functions.”
“Future handsets will develop into voice-centric, converged-function and specialist categories, driven by increasingly segmented consumer demand,” he continued, as we grappled to sync up with his mindshare paradigm shift.
The good doctor reckoned that voice-centric handsets will remain the largest single product category in emerging markets; while developed economies will see converged-function and specialist handsets taking the lead in 2011.
Ball rubbing
After giving their crystal ball a good rub, the report authors predicted that annual global handset shipments will reach 1.5 billion in 2011 – up from just over 800 million in 2005 – while voice-centric handsets will still make up more than half of shipments in emerging markets in 2011.
Converged-function handsets look set to become a mainstream product in developed markets by 2011, hogging over 30% of the market, with a range of specialist handsets looking to be the biggest sellers in the majority of developed economies by the same time period.
Looking to scoop up some late summer sales action is Casio’s new Exilim Zoom EX-Z700 digital camera, available in silver and gunmetal. 
Cheese FX
Pentax have announced their new ultra-compact Optio S7 camera which features a seven megapixel sensor with high sensitivity up to ISO 1600 (at 4 mp).Released almost a year after their popular Optio S6 model, the camera upgrade features Pentax’s “Face Recognition AF & AE”, a 2.5″ non-glare LCD monitor, DivX Movie Mode and support for the new SDHC card format. 
This ramps the ISO up to 1600, letting the Optio take advantage of faster shutter speeds in low light situations, but at the expense of image size, with the resolution slipping down to 4 MB (2304 x 1728 pixels). 
There’s also a movie anti-shake feature, although this will give users a narrower field of view than during normal recording. 
Somewhat earlier than expected, Motorola has officially announced the follow up to their wildly successful V3x phone, the new MotoRAZR MAXX. 
Motorola claim that the phone can reach download speeds as fast as 3.6MB per second using the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) handsets. 
Moto has wedged in VGA and 2.0 megapixel cameras for two-way video calling, with Bluetooth 2.0+ Enhanced Data Rate, 50MB of internal storage and a microSD slot (up to 2GB) for storing tunes, videos and data. 
In the largest UK study of its kind, the Mobile Life Report has revealed our attitudes towards mobile phones and how they have impacted on our lives, with more than 90% of UK mobile users saying they can’t get through the day without using their phone. 
Lord knows why people bothered to answer these questions, but the survey found that a quarter of people bothered to disconnect their mobiles before indulging in a bit of hanky panky, with 11% switching them to silent (writer resists cheap joke about vibra-alerts) and 14% turning their phones off altogether. 
After an eternity of denials, obfuscation, rumour and counter-rumour, Microsoft have finally confirmed that they will be launching their own rival to Apple’s iPod range. 
Billboard Magazine, who broke the story, has speculated that the Zune-branded range of products will include music players, video players, WiFi-enabled devices and possibly even a portable video game device, with Microsoft incorporating social networking and mobile media purchasing. 
Microsoft has already busied itself with the dreadfully punned 
It wasn’t that long ago that you’d be sure to garner approving nods from your fellow executives if you pulled out a pen that lit up when your mobile phone had a call coming in (yes! we had one too!). 
If this multi-function pen has excited your wavelengths, be advised that it’s only available in limited quantities for a limited time only, so get your order in quick! 
According to figures compiled by mmetrics.com, a research firm who strut around in the exciting world of mobile market measurement, when it comes to mobile phones there’s a hefty transatlantic gulf in smartphone tastes. 
French say “Nous aimons Nokia”
“Ja ist Nokia gut,” say Germans
Americans go ape for Palm
One of the reasons I found myself being wooed over to the Windows Mobile dark side last year was after Palm unforgivably failed to deliver on their promise of Wi-Fi drivers for the Treo 650. 
Although the lack of Wi-Fi remains a major disappointment on the Treo (it’s also noticeably absent from the latest Treo 700p, much to the consternation of their loyal user base), T-Mobile’s superb unlimited data Web’n’Walk deal more than makes up for it, offering unlimited GPRS data for just £7 a month. 
Although onboard Wi-Fi appears to remains a distant dream for the Treo there is at least the option to use the Enfora Wi-Fi sled (review coming shortly). 
There is, however, a way to access Skype on a Palm via a service called 
The terrible day that the mobile phone companies had been hoping wasn’t going to arrive, is here. Skype have today announced four WiFi handsets that let you send and receive calls without switching your computer on while wanding around – err, like a mobile phone. They’ve been expected for a while, but are finally getting closer to the hands of the public, being as they’ll start selling in Q3 this year. 
We got our hand on the NetGear SPH101 recently and were really impressed with the solid build and how easy it was to use. The Skype interface was loyal to the computer-based editions, with the graphics being an exact replica.