A new smartphone produced by LG, one of the world’s largest electronics producers, will be their first to run Google’s Android platform, the company announced recently.

But, for now, the services will only extend to LG’s domestic market – South Korea.

Although, LG has said before that about half of the smartphones it sells in 2010 will be equipped with Android technology. The electronics company will also stay committed to selling smartphones powered by Microsoft’s Windows mobile platform, according to recent news reports.

Reporting for mobile tech news site FierceWireless, Phil Goldstein says that LG is trying to use the new smartphone capabilities to end up on top of the telecommunications market this year.

"LG has so far taken a backseat to competitors in the smartphone arena, but is aiming to make a major push on that front this year," says Goldstein.

Goldstein also says the company wants to command a double-digit smartphone market share by 2012.

With Android, the company may be hedging its best bet for increased sales, a recent study indicates.

According to Gartner research, Google’s Android system increased its market share from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 3.9 percent by the end of last year.

Smartphones use may become easier for the illiterate and disabled because of a new initiative from two foreign research organizations and one of the world’s largest computer companies.

IBM has partnered with the National Institute of Design in India as well as Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology to identify the aspects of modern mobile technology that are inaccessible to the blind, deaf, illiterate and elderly and to create a user interface platform that is easier to use for disabled people, the company announced recently.

Researchers leading the project say that smartphones offer tools for increased self-determination and should be available to everyone.

"We believe the findings will help us offer affordable services to a large population, who are still deprived of access to key information sources," said Chieko Asakawa, chief technology officer of IBM’s accessibility research. "Through this collaborative research initiative, we will uncover real information accessibility requirements."

For some other segments of society, smartphones have offered increased to access information. A recent report in the Indianapolis Star states that inexpensive smartphone technology has resulted in the use of the internet amongst African-Americans to equal that of the white population.

Total sales of smartphones will increase to 491.9 million units by 2012, more than triple from the 139.3 million level reached in 2008, according to Connecticut-based research firm.

To demonstrate the growing demand for smartphones at all levels, a recent article from Bloomberg News compared these numbers with the 443.1 million PC units projected for sale by 2012, to grow from the 2008 figure of 290.8 million.

The Bloomberg report cited Gartner research to make that claim and added that the demand for iPhones and Google’s Nexus One will fuel this growth.

Analysts told the business news providers smartphone sales have the trajectory to exceed that of more traditional phones in the upcoming years.

“Smartphones are headed towards that billion-unit category that handsets are in today,” said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat, based in Arizona. “The smartphone is the billion-unit pot of gold that everyone wants.”

Part of the reason for such growth is the increasing affordability of smartphones and cost saving solutions like mobile management, experts say. A recent report by iStockAnalyst says that smartphone pricing will become ultra-competitive this year.

A new study suggests that more than half of workers take advantage of smartphone technology while they are driving a car.

A survey by CareerBuilder, a major capital solutions firm, showed that 54 percent of participants – 52,000 workers from several industries – used their smartphones while operating a vehicle, the company announced recently.

While sales workers were found to be the most prone to heed the call of mobile phone management, with 66 percent saying they used a smartphone while driving, the 59 percent of professional and business services workers the second-most frequent users of smartphones behind the wheel.

CareerBuilder representatives said that mobile management is eroding the barrier of work and leisure time.

"The lines between work and life can be very blurry these days," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder. "Seventeen percent of workers said they feel like their work day never ends because of technology connecting them to the office."

Haefner warned that workers may become burnt out from the constant connectivity.

But another study commissioned last year by Egnyte found that 88 percent of small businesses believe mobile management is critical to their success.

Verizon Wireless will provide its subscribers with the ability to watch NFL football games, the major telecommunications provider announced recently.

Through a four-year agreement with the football organization, coverage of the upcoming NFL draft and the next NFL season will be available on Verizon smartphones, according to the announcement. Using their wireless phone applications, users will be able to watch live streams of the NFL RedZone channel, NFL Network, NBC’s Sunday night football.

An NFL spokesperson said the increased accessibility and mobility of NFL game coverage provided by the Verizon smartphones will be a win-win for fans, the phone company and the football organization.

"Our fans have an insatiable appetite for football," said Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s senior vice president for media strategy. "We will be able to keep them connected wherever they are on game day but also throughout the year."

The viewing experience will increase in quality when Verizon launches its 4G network, the telecommunications company claims. The 4G coverage will be available to at least 25 markets this year, and will supplement its nationwide 3G coverage by the end of 2013.

Also creating a 4G network is Sprint, which will launch the speedier services in the first half of 2010, according to an eWEEK report.

Employees in a broad range of sectors may want to consider smartphones to maximize their effectiveness. According to one expert, the added availability provided by a smartphone could provide a competitive advantage in the most crucial of situations.

Writing for Investment Executive, Danny Bradbury argues that wireless phone applications are a necessity for keeping in touch with important news, and also allow the user to be more accessible to fellow workers, customers and clients.

"If you don’t already have a smartphone, you’re already behind the pack," he says. "The smartphone has all the benefits of a conventional cellphone but also enables you to send and receive email, making you more accessible to clients and the people at the office, no matter where you are. Or, if you use an online scheduling application, you can update your schedule from any computer or smartphone."

Bradbury cites a recent survey conducted by Telecom Trends International forecasting that the number of smartphones sold across the globe will eclipse sales of so-called dumb phones by 2016.

Smartphones are getting faster as well as more numerous. New microchips and user interface improvements have boosted processor speeds, according to a recent report in Sci-Tech Today.

We’re always encouraged when we find in-depth articles that come to the same conclusions as Visage Mobile. It’s always good to see that the pulse of the industry is right in line with the business strategies we are pursuing for enterprise mobility management.

A recent article in Information Week called “Global CIO: The Top 10 CIO Issues for 2010,” hit at least three points that hit close to home for Visage Mobile and our live app MobilityCentral. Read the rest of this entry »

Two computer security professionals snuck a sophisticated mobile Trojan into an innocent-looking weather app for the iPhone and Android-powered devices, quickly amassing a smartphone botnet encompassing 8,000 devices.

The device secretly gathered information on users, including phone numbers and GPS coordinates, much in the same way as a PC botnet compromises those devices. The researchers, Derek Brown and Daniel Tijerina, told security news website Dark Reading that "this was really surprising because if this was malicious code, that’s a lot of bots we would control."

While numerous wireless mobile solutions were compromised by the devices, both Apple and Google emphasized that the app was not available for download in either of their officially licensed – and monitored – app stores. A Google spokesman told Dark Reading that "any user trying to download this application would need to change a setting on their Android device and bypass a security warning screen to enable downloading applications from other websites."

Experts say that "jailbreaking" – removing in-built security systems in an attempt to access broader functionality – can pose serious security hazards.

Sony today let slip that it would release its own line of wireless mobile solutions to U.S. consumers, in a bid to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s iPhone for smartphone gamers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that anonymous sources within the company revealed that "the new products are targeted for launch in 2010, although many details such as price and certain specifications have yet to be finalized. Both the new smart phone and the multifunction device are expected to work with Sony’s new online media platform, due to launch later this month in the U.S. as the company’s answer to Apple’s iTunes."

Tech blog The Inquirer points out that Sony has been notably unsuccessful across most of its product lines in the recent past, alluding to the lackluster sales performance of the PSPgo and its faltering music business. (The company used to own the premier music player brand in the world, Walkman.)

Much will hinge on the upcoming launch of the company’s PlayStation Network, which will help it compete not only with iTunes, but with Microsoft’s X-box Live network.

While many tech pundits have castigated Apple’s refusal to support Adobe’s Flash video framework on their mobile devices, some say that the company’s CEO, Steve Jobs, could yet prove himself to be a visionary.

According to tech news website Slashgear, "website developers seem to be scaling back their use of the technology so as to maintain accessibility across as many devices as possible. Virgin America is the latest big-name company to bypass Flash and choose basic HTML for their new site, telling The Register that the older standard was ‘good enough’ for their requirements."

Jobs has bet heavily that HTML5, the nascent upgrade to the web’s most basic programming language, will make his lack of support for Flash irrelevant. HTML5 is expected to include much more robust support for multimedia content than the current generation.

For the moment, however, Apple’s Flash-free devices retain a significant handicap in the market for video-capable wireless mobile solutions. While other frameworks exist, Flash systems make up the vast bulk of the video and interactive content currently present on the web.

Popular VoIP service Skype is now available for users of smartphones running Nokia’s Symbian operating system, enabling free instant messaging and Skype-to-Skype calling.

PC World reports that "Nokia and Skype have developed different clients for Nokia phones that have a touchscreen, including the Nokia N97 mini and the new X6, and those that use regular buttons, including the E72. But the functionality is the same on both clients."

VoIP services do not use the same cellular voice technology that regular mobile phones do, instead sending signals digitally over the web. This wireless technology solution makes for cheap – or free – calling, but requires an active mobile internet connection, which inflates monthly cell phone bills. Whether or not a transition to VoIP makes financial sense is a matter for telecommunication cost control professionals.

Experts say that Skype’s VoIP technology will be most useful, perhaps, for those users who need to make large amounts of international calls, as these would cost significant sums of money every minute on a standard cellular voice connection.

Advances in the technology used to produce microchips and improvements to user interfaces are among the factors driving the rapid expansion of the smartphone market, according to Sven Appel of Sci-Tech Today.

Google Android, Windows Phone 7, and a host of other operating systems have followed in the footsteps of Apple’s iPhone OS to create a slick, hassle-free user experience, and Android programmer Andy Rubin told Appel that "soon we’ll have mobile phones with 2 GHz processors, which is more than in a lot of laptops." The smartphone, in other words, could soon become the central venue in which basic internet functions like browsing and email are performed.

Telecommunication cost reduction could become easier as the smartphone market continues to heat up and increasing competition drives prices down. Appel says that microchip producer Marvell is aiming to produce a $99 phone, and that the company may be close to achieving that goal.

Experts say that more companies could be set to enter the U.S. smartphone market, as several firms are testing their devices in overseas markets before involving themselves in the hyper-competitive – and hyper-profitable – American sector.