One in five smartphones sold in the United States during the second quarter was 4G LTE-enabled according to The NPD Group, and the market for LTE handsets is set to continue its rapid ascent according to a new report. Market research firm In-Stat on Wednesday suggested sales of handsets with embedded 4G LTE will surpass 154 million units in 2015. We’ve seen even more bullish projections — ABI Research said last week that annual LTE smartphone sales would reach 245 million devices in 2016 — but the c...

Tablet vendors shipped 18.7 million units during the third quarter of this year, DigiTimes said on Tuesday. Third-quarter shipments were up 27.5% over the second quarter, but the increase was less than the 60.9% jump in shipments between the first and second quarters of this year. The slower growth was attributed to a weaker global economy, and the entire industry suffered. Apple is estimated to have shipped 13 million units in the September quarter, fewer than DigiTimes’s prediction that Apple would sh...

Investment in mobile security will increase 44% annually through 2015 according to a recent research report from Canalys. Reportedly, just 4% of smartphones shipped last year were sold with security software pre-installed. Canalys suggests that, by 2015, more than 20% of all smartphones and tablets will run some form of security software and mobile security will be a $3 billion market. The research firm attributes the growth to an increase in pressure from enterprise customers, and it expects the usage of cli...

A recent report from Net Applications suggests that Apple’s iOS and Mac OS X operating systems both achieved a record high global market shares during the month of September. iOS had a global market share of 54.65% for the month, up from the 53.04% grip it had on the market in August. iOS is trailed by Java ME with an 18.52% market share, Android (16.25%)  Symbian (6.12%) and BlackBerry (3.29%). Mac OS X reached a record high 6.45% share of the operating system market during September, up from 6.03% in...

The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is now home to more than 30,000 applications according to app tracking website WindowsPhoneAppList. On July 2nd, the Windows Marketplace for Microsoft’s Windows Phones passed the 25,000 milestone. By comparison, Apple’s iTunes App Store is populated with more than 500,000 applications and Google confirmed in May that the Android Market has more than 200,000 apps. The Windows Marketplace’s paid app list is loaded with games — as it should be considering th...

China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest PC market during the second quarter of 2011 according to a new report from IDC. PC shipments in China totaled 18.5 million units during the second quarter, more than the 17.7 million units shipped in the United States. The research firm is projecting that Chinese PC shipments will total 85.1 million units next year, compared to just 76.6 million units shipped in the U.S. The influx of new tablet devices and advanced smartphones, such as Apple̵...

Last week we saw the first images of a new Motorola handset largely believed to be the successor to the ATRIX 4G. Now rumors have surfaced that the phone’s model number is actually “MB865″ and that it packs a 4G LTE radio, which lends credence to the possibility of it launching as AT&T’s first 4G LTE smartphone. According to PhoneArena, which purportedly obtained a leaked internal system screenshot from AT&T, the MB865 will be field tested in a number of markets where AT&T ...

Apple, Google, HTC, Samsung, Microsoft… it’s hard to name a technology company that’s not currently involved in a patent battle with another firm. Google’s general counsel Kent Walker thinks the legal battles could actually hurt consumers and the landscape of today’s ever changing smartphone market. “The tech industry has a significant problem,” Walker said. “Software patents are kind of gumming up the works of innovation.” Google chairman Eric Schmidt rec...

Taiwan-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute expects roughly 360 million combined personal computers and media tablets to ship in 2011, Taiwan Economic News reports. MIC sees PC shipments growing 6.6% over 2010 to land at more than 320 million units this year, and it thinks shipments of media tablets like Apple’s iPad 2ill w exceed 48 million units in 2011, up 198% from 2010. MIC senior industry analyst Chris Wei notes that the improving global economy and replacement PC purchases in the ...

Sales of Apple’s iPad 2 tablet are set to explode in the third quarter according to Hong Kong-based research firm CLSA. Citing LCD sales data from DisplaySearch, the firm thinks Apple will unload 14.4 million iPad 2 tablets in the third quarter this year, well above the consensus of between 10 and 12 million units. But nothing is set in stone and Apple has widely missed iPad sales estimates in the past, though those misses were due largely to supply constraints. ”Keep in mind that AAPL has missed...

Google’s share of the U.S. smartphone market dipped for the first time since 2009 according to Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf. Needham says Android’s share slid from 52.4% to 49.5% in the first quarter, its first sequential market share loss in any region since the second quarter of 2009. Wolf attributes the dip to the launch of Verizon Wireless’ iPhone 4; Apple’s U.S. market share ballooned more than 12 points to 29.5% in the first quarter. Wolf believes Android’s marke...

The Public Utilities Commission in California will investigate AT&T’s planned acquisition of T-Mobile, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Golden state is one of three states that Sprint has asked to investigate the deal — the other two are West Virginia and Louisiana. “We believe a thorough investigation will reveal the negative implications for pricing, choice, and innovation critical to California’s economy,” Sprint’s public affairs manager, John Taylor, said...

“We no longer anticipate Research in Motion recovering to participate in the mainstream of smartphone industry growth.” Those are the words of Matthew Robison, an analyst with Wunderlich Securities, which recently downgraded RIM’s stock. Robison argues that RIM is going to lose the consumer interest that it has built over the last few years. “Our long-term forecast anticipates a role supplying business-oriented devices, both mid-range and high end, as well as cloud-based services via t...

Nokia could launch its first Windows Phone some time this year, and when it does, the firm plans to set a quick pace to get more phones into the market. Speaking in an interview with PCMag, Nokia’s executive vice president of smartphones, Jo Harlow, discussed Nokia’s roll-out strategy. “We should be launching new devices in a rhythm that might be every couple of months, every three months, something like that,” Harlow said. Unlike HTC and Samsung, which see Windows Phone as a “se...