Thanks to a strong fourth quarter, Apple has passed LG to become the world’s third largest cell phone vendor by volume, according to new estimates from market research firm IDC. The worldwide mobile phone market grew 6.1%  year-over-year in the fourth quarter as the feature phone market continued to decline to its lowest growth rate in two years. Vendors shipped 427.4 million phones in the fourth quarter compared to 402.8 million units in the same quarter last year. Nokia and Samsung remained the top a...

Best Buy on Friday reported weaker than expected revenue for the five weeks ended December 31st, 2011. The company noted $8.4 billion in revenue, which was flat compared to the same period last year but included a comparable store sales decline of 1.2%. The company’s international segment generated $1.9 billion in revenue, a 1.7% decrease and a 4.3% drop off in store sales. Its domestic segment generated $6.5 billion in revenue, which was up 0.4% from the same period last year but it also represented a ...

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop once again addressed rumors of a possible sale of Nokia’s phone business. Rumors emerged on Wednesday suggesting Samsung was preparing to bid on Nokia’s cell phone division, but Elop addressed them on Thursday while speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Elop insisted that the rumors are “completely groundless.” The CEO continued, “Nokia is not for sale.” While Elop has been steady with his message, there is of course wiggle room in his choice of word...

Google is on stage and just announced that the next major Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, will launch in Q4 of this year. It will combine the tablet and smartphone operating systems into one joint OS that will support all devices. Google bills it as “One OS everywhere, state of the art UI, advanced app framework, open source.” The universal OS will be able to adapt to the specific form factor of the device it’s running on, and also includes new features like face-tracking and camera enhancem...

Intel gathered by blog Android Central indicates that Sprint and Google will make their Google Voice partnership ready for prime time on April 26th. The venture, which was announced last month, will allow Sprint customers to seamlessly integrate their current wireless number with Google’s Voice service. Calls and texts sent from your mobile device will be logged by Google Voice’s online system, and calls can be made from the browser using the service’s VoIP feature. International calls mad...

The CTIA Wireless conference is just around the corner, and in preparation for the three day extravaganza, the Wireless Association is starting to make its final preparations for the event. Part of these preparations include listing the finalists for conference awards, and the “Phones/Smartphones” category has yielded some interesting information. The first three finalists include the HTC ThunderBolt, Motorola ATRIX 4G, and LG Revolution. The final two candidates included on the list are ...

Yesterday, we told you about an issue being experience by Samsung Windows Phone owners that was causing a recently released update to fail — or in the worst cases render a handset unusable. Late last night, Microsoft took to the web to explain exactly what it’s discovered about the missteps of its first Windows Phone update.“90 percent of people who’ve received an update notification have installed the new software patch successfully,” writes Microsoft’s Michael Stroh. “O...

Yup, we’ll definitely be ordering one of these the moment they become available. The two man company that is Satarii is working on an accessory designed to put the camcorder on your mobile phone, iPod touch, and small Flip-style camcorder on a swivel, literally. The Star accessory is a glorified tripod with a motorized base that can rotate 360-degrees — following a specially designed marker placed on your person — automatically tracking your movements in real-time. Clip the marker to yo...

Looking to get your main squeeze a new smartphone for Valentine’s Day? You may want to give T-Mobile a look. The nation’s fourth largest wireless provider will be pricing every phone in its lineup, including smartphones, at $0 on February 11th and 12th. The offer is good at T-Mobile retail locations and a new two-year agreement must be signed. Not a bad deal. Anyone interested? Hit the jump for the full press release. (more…)

At a press event on Wednesday, a Google spokesperson confirmed that Android 3.0 Honeycomb will not be made available for Android-powered smartphones, PC Magazine reports. The new Android 3.0 operating system was designed specifically for tablets, according to the report. Andrew Kovacs, a spokesman for Google, said that features from Honeycomb “will arrive on phones over time,” but he declined to elaborate on when Android smartphone users might expect these new features to begin rolling out to phon...

Google’s VP of Engineering, Andy Rubin, utilized the social-network Twitter to drop some knowledge on the world. Mr. Rubin notes that his company’s mobile operating system is now being activated on over 300,000 phones each and every day. That’s over 2.1 million phones every week and over 9 million phones every month. Back in August of this year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that Android activations had just passed the 200,000 per day mark — and subsequently set off a little activa...

AmazonWireless announced Thursday that all AT&T phones on its website are now on sale. The popular online retailer is offering smartphones and feature phones from AT&T for as little as 1¢. The sale even includes just-released Windows Phone 7-powered smartphones from AT&T, like the HTC Surround. Here are some highlights:•BlackBerry Torch: 1¢•HTC Surround: 1¢•LG Quantum: 1¢•Motorola BACKFLIP: 1¢•Motorola BRAVO: 1¢•Motorola CHARM: 1¢•Motorola FLIPOUT: 1¢•Motorola FLIPSIDE: 1¢...

If you’ve ever used a service like gazelle.com, you’ll be familiar with the new service Verizon Wireless is offering. The company has launched a trade-in program that will allow you to exchange your used (or abused) phone for a VZW gift card. Here’s how the service works: you go to www.trade-in.vzw.com and input the type of device you have (it does not have to be a Verizon device), you answer several questions about the devices condition (does it make calls, does the screen work, is the scre...

We’re not sure why the Verizon Wireless news always seems to appear on Friday afternoon… but it does. One of our VZW ninjas sent us in a memo (pictured above) that was distributed to select Verizon Wireless employees today. The communication details that beginning in Q4, Verizon will start to phase out the “3G Multimedia device” category and discontinue requiring a $9.99 monthly data plan on the new 3G feature phones being released to replace said devices. 3G multimedia phones that ha...