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Smartphone sales are on fire, according to a new report from market research firm In-Stat.

In a new report published Tuesday, In-Stat predicted that smartphone sales will grow at a rate of more than 30 percent a year for the next five years. This is much faster than the overall cell phone market, which is growing in the single digits. The report also said that smartphone sales are outpacing the sale of laptops, as more corporate customers use their phones on the road.

"Because of the value users are finding, organizations are slowly taking ownership of smartphones and data … Read more

There's been a flurry of excitement about open source in the mobile world in the past few weeks, what with Google's Open Handset Alliance and its associated Android software platform. In all the hype (some deserved, some not), people seem to have forgotten one Very Big Problem in mobile:

There is a huge array of different hardware and software specifications.

Google's Android solves the software specification problem (at least, for those phones that end up using it), but it does nothing to resolve the wider compatibility problem for mobile developers. Developing for the Android platform may make sense five years from now, but it's a losing (market) proposition until it gains widespread adoption.

Which is why Volantis' decision to open source its framework is such a positive thing for the mobile world:… Read more

Google's Android software gives Sun Microsystems' Java technology a starring role--but not the version of Java the rest of the mobile phone industry has been developing since the 1990s.

Instead, Google struck off on its own in an attempt to improve performance and openness for the software used in the Open Handset Alliance phones. That means programmers will have a new variety of Java to reckon with--offset somewhat by Google's $10 million code contest to draw developers in.

One difference is Google's development of its own core Java virtual machine (JVM) technology called Dalvik, the software that … Read more

So, what could Google execs be talking about with the man who created American Idol and X Factor?

The United Kingdom's Guardian online reports that Google has been in discussions for about a year with Simon Fuller. Fuller worked with the Spice Girls and managed David Beckham in addition to creating popular entertainment shows like Pop Idol.

The report cites unidentified sources close to Fuller saying the deal could "revolutionize the way entertainment and music are distributed."

Asked for comment, a YouTube spokesman said: "Simon Fuller has a promotional branded channel on YouTube and we don'… Read more

Today, as promised, the first preview version of the Android Development Kit (download it for Windows or Mac) surfaced on the Google Code site. Last week, Google made big news by announcing Android, an open, cell-phone platform being developed in conjunction with the more than 30 companies that compose the Open Handset Alliance.

If you're a developer of mobile-phone software, you'll likely want to dive right into the documentation for Android. If you're not, you likely won't read about Android again until next year, when (and if) it starts surfacing on consumer-end cell phones.… Read more

Google released the Android SDK earlier today, which has no doubt sent aspiring programmers and developers in a downloading frenzy trying to get a piece of the proverbial Google pie. But here's what you, the consumer, would really want to know: An Android phone will most likely support a webkit-compatible browser, Wi-Fi, GSM technology (like EDGE and HSDPA), 3G, threaded text messaging, a photo gallery (with a filmstrip plus grid album view), plus a touch screen. Hardware is really up in the air at this point, but we did catch a glimpse of a couple of hardware prototypes included … Read more

Northeastern University has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, claiming the database architecture that Google uses to feed up search results has been misappropriated, according to The Boston Globe.

The lawsuit claims the technology was developed and patented by a company called Jarg in Waltham, Mass., that was co-founded by Northeastern professor Kenneth Baclawski. The patent, owned by the university and licensed to Baclawski, covers a method for sectioning database queries into different portions that are each processed by a different computer.

The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of … Read more

Google on Monday released programming tools for its Android mobile-phone alliance for download, giving developers the ability to start writing software for phones due to start shipping in 2008 and $10 million in prizes to lure them.

The software development kit (SDK), an open-source package available for download for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X machines, shows that Java is indeed the programming language for software running on the Linux-based phones.

Accompanying the SDK is a raft of details that wasn't available when Google and its partners announced the Open Handset Alliance a week ago. The Android software includes … Read more

After what felt like a long hibernation period, Google has recently made at least a partial PageRank update of the visible or public PageRank, often referred to as Toolbar PageRank. And boy was it noticed--not so much with the update but with the PageRank drops targeted at sites that were buying and/or selling text links.

A lot has been said already by many who have a much deeper understanding and forecast this event. What I find particularly interesting is how PageRank has become a form of currency, yet who can say what precisely that value is? Of course, I … Read more