IDC, who you may remember from the Microsoft-used-the-wrong-slide media fiasco earlier this year, has gone ahead and released their forecast for smartphone adoption over the next five years in their Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report.

Personally, we can't even imagine what a smartphone will look like in 2014, nor what the landscape would look like, but assuming the current state of things, lets see what IDC says:

• For the first half of 2010, vendors shipped a total of 119.4 million units or 55.5% more than the 76.8 million units shipped during the first half of 2009
• "Android is the wild card, deserving close observation for the rest of this year and the years to come,"
• IDC now expects the 2010 overall mobile phone market to grow 14.1%, or 1.5% higher than its previous forecast. Last year, the market declined 2.8%, the first such occurrence in Mobile Phone Tracker history
• Despite uncertainty about the economy, the smartphone market is expected to increase 24.5% in 2011. However, smartphone growth will decline progressively over the course of IDC's five-year forecast period. In 2014, for example, the market is expected to rise by just 13.6%
• No one smartphone OS will dominate mobile phones in the way that Microsoft has with Windows on the personal computer. "IDC believes the market will comfortably support up to five OS players over the next five years,"

Finally, the big news for Microsoft it they are expected to regain market share bumping from a low of 6.8% to 9.8% by 2014. While that's only an overall 3% change in overall market share, due to the increasingly huge numbers of smartphones we are talking about, it translates into a 43% change in volume, which is pretty significant, assuming its accuracy. They would only trail Android as far as speed of growth at that point.

While no one predicts Microsoft to dominate the mobile OS field anytime soon, it's not too hard to imagine them being a major player by 2014, if they play their cards right.

Last we heard from NVIDIA, they were talking a little smack about Windows 7 on tablets and not getting much love from phone OEMs (despite a push starting two years ago to get in on Windows Mobile).

And while the Zune HD features the original Tegra, not much has been revealed about the Tegra 2's plans outside of 'it's coming'.

Now it looks like LG is the first major smartphone OEM to commit themselves to the powerhouse CPU coming out Q4 of this year. The Tegra 2 is no slouch, featuring 

...the first mobile dual-core CPU, the only ultra low-power NVIDIA GeForce(r) GPU and the first 1080p HD mobile video processor. Taking full advantage of the two speedy 1 GHz processors sharing the workload in Tegra 2, consumers can experience up to 2x faster web browsing and up to 5x faster gaming performance over single core processors running at 1 GHz. NVIDIA's leadership in graphics also delivers flawless 1080p HD video playback, console-quality gaming and amazing 3D capabilities.

Sounds quite promising and LG intends such a CPU for their Optimus line, which includes Android and Windows Phone 7 devices, though no word on whether both OSs will get the Tegra 2 treatment.

All of this sounds good, what with Intel getting ready to re-enter the market and Microsoft perhaps unfairly committed to Qualcomm, we say the more the competition the merrier.

Finally, no word on whether those current LG devices featuring Windows Phone 7 (C900/E900) have a Tegra 2 or Qualcomm, though we're leaning towards the latter. Who knows about production-ready devices though. We'll keep an eye out.

Read the whole press release after the break...

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Rumors are circulating that HTC has scheduled a press event for September 15, 2010 in London to introduce the HD3 Windows Phone 7 device.

The HTC Windows Phone 7 is reported to have a 4.5" AMOLED touchscreen, dual core 1.5ghz ARM-based processor, 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, 4G capable, a 8mp camera with HD recording capabilities, all powered by a 1800mah battery.

We've seen signs that the HD3 will be headed to the UK provider O2 as the HTC HD7. However, some are reporting the HTC Windows Phone 7 is headed to Australian provider Telstra on an exclusive 3-month deal.

Hopefully, after the 15th, we all will have a better picture on the where and when the HD3 will make it to market. We're also curious to know if anything will be mentioned about the U.S. market time-line.

via: Unwired View

Well, it looks like Microsoft has started spending all that money to market Windows Phone 7. The above ad ran before a private screening of the upcoming re-make of Lawrence of Arabia.

It's a shame the screening wasn't for a re-make of 2001: A Space Odyssey. You could have had the black monolith replaced with a Windows Phone 7 and have HAL the computer announce the start of the revolution (or would that be too 'droid like?).

So, what do you think? The ad is a teaser and void any substantive information on the new phones.  It does match the desert theme of Lawrence of Arabia but for those not as familiar with the new Windows Phones, is it enough to spark an interest? It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does as a follows up ad.

via: intomobile.com

Mal and Phil are laboring on this Labor Day holiday for more Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Phone 7!

• Download it directly with this link
• Subscribe on your Zune
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe directly to the Podcast feed with your favorite Podcatcher here
• Listen to it here with the flash player above.

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The rumors are true, folks. There's actually a Windows Phone here at the IFA conference in Berlin, Germany. It's the LG Optimus 7, aka the GW910 aka the Panther. It's not a full production unit just yet, and it was on hand really to show off DLNA media sharing -- which lets you wirelessly pipe video, photos and the like from your phone to your TV. Photos and video after the break.

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HTC has tweeted that Peeps is back up and running. Actually, according to Twitter it's been up and running for a few days.

Earlier this week everything went dark due to a problem when Twitter changed their authentication protocol.  It's nice to see that the conflict wasn't too hard to resolve.  Now that everything is up and running again, we can sit back, enjoy the weekend and tweet about our favorite College football team. War Eagle!

update: Might have spoken too soon based on the first few comments.  It appears that some devices might be up and running while WinMo is still down.

Verizon Wireless is now offering pre-paid monthly data plans without the need for service contracts. This includes a $30 pre-paid unlimited plan and a $10 pre-paid 25mb plan (anything over 25mb will cost you $.20 per MB).

The limitation is that these pre-paid data plans are only for 3G enabled phones and the list of eligible phones doesn't include any Windows Phones. On the list you have Blackberry devices, Palm devices, and Android devices but not a single Windows Phone.

The tiered data plans are similar to what AT&T moved to back in June and you can find all the fine print on these new plans over at Verizon.

While the new data plans might make smart phones more attractive, the lack of any Windows Phones being eligible gives us pause. We have seen indications that Verizon's existing Windows Phones may be short lived and there seems to be a lack of interest from Verizon on Windows Phone 7.

Could the new data plans be just another sign that Verizon will be dropping Microsoft completely from it's lineup? Or are we reading too much into this on a slow news day?

via: Android Central

When it's a slow news day and you have a quote from an official at a company, you can quickly make a mountain out of a molehill.

In an interview with Reuters, Samsung was quoted as saying

We are prioritizing our Android platform. Android is very open and flexible, and there is a consumer demand for it

Translation: Android is selling very well for us, we're going to continue to do that. We're not sure when it became news that a company who is having success with a 2+ year old mobile OS decided they will continue that path, but evidently that's the case.

Of course, the other half of the non-news news is what YH Lee, head of marketing at Samsung Mobile said about the upcoming Windows Phone 7, namely that "There is still some professional, specialized demand there", which is also not so controversial. Sure, it's not hurling accolades either, if anything it is sort of vacuous marketing speak that dominates 90% of business dialog.

Samsung is, for the first time in a long time, making big strides in the smartphone market, actually challenging HTC with their Android offerings (specifically the Galaxy S series). All of those silly iPhone knock offs that Sprint and other had, their mediocre Windows Mobile offerings, etc. never really paid them and now we're supposed to feign surprise that they want to keep with this Android thing? Feh.

And what of Windows Phone 7? It's an unreleased OS, not tested in the finicky, volatile market. Despite how good it may or may not be, how much money MS throws behind it, there are no guarantees and to think Samsung would put everything behind it and not the current money-maker Android is just bizarre. If WP7 is popular, Samsung will no doubt "prioritize" it. You know, follow the money.

This is capitalism 101, not news people.

[Reuters]