Google has made it official, the last batch of Nexus One phones are being sold, and then the entire brand is dead. Basically, the HTC made phone never really got traction in the market place, shipping only about 135,000 units. Google’s choice to go with direct sales pretty much seems to be the culprit, keeping the phone out of retail stores and also keeping it out of packages with providers. While it was a cool phone, it appeared to have missed the market a bit, in part because the smart phone market jumped almost a generation in a short period of time.

Read more of the story here or here

While RIM continues to dominate the US market with more than 40% of the phones out there, Android has been coming on strong. At 13% of the market, Android phones are starting to put pressure on Microsoft phones (at 13.2%) and even Apple (at around 24%). The Android increase is 4% in a short period of time, even as Apples was releases the IPhone4. This is a very strong showing for the Google operating system

See more of the numbers here

The Apple Iphone4 has only been out for a very short amount of time, and already problems are cropping up. One of the strangest is reception problems, because of the way the integrated antenna is put in the phone. It seems that if users hold the phone in a certain manner, they can actually attenuate the signal and give the phone significantly poorer reception. Apple’s answer was only somewhat diplomatic, and pretty much said that the users should learn how to hold the phone properly. How odd!

IN amongst all of this, there are pretty solid rumors floating around that ios 4.0.1 won’t be far off. Apparently one of the issues of reception is entirely based on what people see on the signal meter on the screen. Apple’s solution is apparently to change the range of the scale so it shows more bars. A great fix, right?

Get a cover for your Iphone4 here!

Apple is once again the victim of their own hype and popularity of upcoming products, this time on the Iphone4. A pre-production Iphone4 was found and put online, which only added to the hype around this device. Now comes word that many people who want to upgrade from older Apple phones are discovering that there just won’t be enough product to go around. This is a pretty typical Apple situation, it seems they are very good at creating extra hype by not supplying enough product to satisfy the market. This leads to lineups and other situations that media tends to pick up on.

Some would suggest however that this type of hype may be a negative for Apple in the long run, as they make their most dedicated customers upset by being unable to meet their needs in a timely fashion. Apple’s rush to hit the market sometimes tramples their existing customer base.

Read the full story here.

HTC is continuing to expand it’s markets, and is always looking for something new. The burgeoning tablet market is likely one of their next steps. They see not only a market for tablets, but they have women specifically as their target market.

At the Open Mobile Summit held in London, HTC’s vice president Europe Dr Florian Seiche said “Our study found women social networking while watching television was a likely use for tablets”.

It appears that HTC sees enough of a market to merit getting into the tablet world.

I found this article from Reuters about the move to lower price smart phones, and found it to be very interesting, especially as it speaks about ZTE, a phone company from China that hasn’t been seen as much under it’s own name in the west. They are aiming for a $100 – $150 smart phone, and many people seem to think this is where the market will end up. The price of the chips is dropping, the price of the screens is dropping, and with cheap or even free operating systems to work from, these phones are now more than possible.

Nokia, which has also been not quite on the top of the smart phone market so far is also agressively looking at this market, and aims to get a smart phone to market before the end of the year at a price well under 100 Euros. That would certainly stand much of the market on it’s ear. It would also potentially put pressure on both Microsoft and Apple. Apple is often the premium price product in the marketplace, and would seem to have the most to lose against a retail market that appears to be above their unit costs.

Read the full story here.

Rarely does anyone talk about Google failing. The Mountain View, California company has been very careful to shield it’s less than successful ideas from the public, often hiding their software offerings under Beta tags, such as the widely anticipated and mostly ignored Google Wave product. By keeping them in Beta mode often for years, they can phase them out without admitting failure.

However, when it came to the cell phone business, Google thought it was on the right track by offering their new Nexus One cell phone direct to the consumer, rather than pushing them through selected wireless carriers as Apple has done with their Iphone. Well, the experiment is apparently over, and online sales are set to end soon as Google moves back to the more standard cell phone through wireless company model.

With the prices of unsubsidized handsets still being higher than what the public generally appears to want to pay, at least in the US, Google has little choice but to go down this route to keep their smart phone in the public eye and in their hands. Otherwise, they risk not only failing on a distribution model error, but also by not making a big enough impression in the marketplace at all.

Read the full story here.

this is one of those stories that is almost too good to be true, yet there it is. Apparently some Apple engineer “lost” one of the pre-production / test versions of the yet to be announced version 4 of the Iphone. Someone happened to find it, and apparently for a few dollars (10k, apparently) he gave his find over to the people at Gizmondo, who played with the new phone. They didn’t get all that far considering Apple quickly did a remote bricking on it, but they have shots and some reviews of the new software they saw.

Interesting featuring include the case (perhaps ceramic) which should help signals get in and out. A Front facing camera is also an indication that Apple might be going down the “visual phone call” route at some point.

It’s an interesting read, check out the full story here. Let’s just say that the buzz out there is suggesting that Apple isn’t very happy about this at all. I wonder if Gizmondo might find themselves with a whole lot less access to Apple for the next little while?

Is HTC planning an OS to rival Apple? Are the planning to buy out Palm, which most seem to think of as the lame duck of the smart portable device market right now?

“We continue to assess, but that requires a few conditions to justify” having our own system, Cheng Hui-ming, chief financial officer of the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company, said in a phone interview recently with Bloomberg. Bloomberg also mentions in this article that Cheng declined to comment on a possible takeover of Palm.

HTC has spent the last few years in rapid growth mode, and has managed to straddle the field with phones using both the Windows and Android operating systems. Under Android, they have used their own set of tools and appearance options. Certainly moving to their own OS would free them of certain bonds or restrictions, and allow them to completely control the user exprience from end to end. It appears that the company sees players like Apple and RIM as being a step above the other players because they have their own unique products, rather than fighting in markets crowded with other players.

Read more of the article at Bloomberg here.

Microsoft did Monday what has been speculated a month ago about the Pink phone, releasing the brand new Kin 1 and Kin 2 phones into the marketplace. The Kin 1 is what was pictures last month as the Pink phone, and the Kin 2 is a more traditional slider style phone with a few twists. The real key in all of this is Microsoft moving aggressively into the social networking market for phones with the Kin 1, and a little more serious but still social Kin 2. Kin 1 is a rounded slider phone with a nicely done keyboard that is intended for heavy texting and social network updating. It also has a 5MP camera, full wireless inclusing 802.11 b/g, and a 2.6 inch touch screen Kin 2 is the more traditional slider, with a larger 3.4 inch screen, stereo sound, 8MP camera, and more potential for storage (up to 8gig).

Check out the Microsoft Kin Site for more info.