Motorola

With more than half its latest devices left on store shelves at the end of the third quarter, things may be getting out of hand for Palm as the manufacturer struggles to hold market share in the rapidly evolving telecom market.

Motorola is placing two new bets on the open-source Android operating system with the release of its Backflip and Devour smartphones. The uniquely designed Backflip began selling through AT&T Wireless late last week, and the Detour is now available from Verizon Wireless.

The 3G/Wi-Fi Backflip, at $99 after rebate and with a two-year contract, is gaining a lot of attention for its unique flip-out QWERTY keyboard, which AT&T has described as "an original reverse flip design."

Big Selling Point -- MOTOBLUR

Google might figuratively be doing a backflip Thursday with news that AT&T will, for the first time, offer a mobile device based on the software and search giant's open-source Android mobile operating system. Appropriately, the device is Motorola's Backflip smartphone.

Some Verizon Wireless customers will soon have access to Skype, an Internet telephone service, the companies announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday. Skype, based in Luxembourg, allows people to use the service to make free video and voice calls. Users are also able to send instant messages and other files.

Verizon data customers will be able to make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls, according to the companies. Users will also be able to make international calls using Skype Out, a competitive service.

Struggling technology company Motorola Inc. said Thursday it plans to split in two in early 2011 -- with one half containing its consumer-focused mobile phone and television set-top box products, and the other holding divisions that target business customers.

The split will give current shareholders a share in each new company, which will be roughly the same size in terms of annual revenue at $11 billion. Both halves will be publicly traded.

Developer interest in building applications for Apple's App Store nearly tripled in January thanks, in part, to the introduction of the much-anticipated iPad. So says Flurry Analytics in its Friday report of the Smartphone Industry Pulse for January.

Flurry Analytics tracked data in more than 20,000 mobile applications to determine that developers who started applications that integrate its mobile analytics package into iPhone applications in January rose nearly three times from December.

Among the 234 million cell-phone users over age 13 in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, Motorola-manufactured hardware dominated the market of all mobile users, according to a comScore survey released Monday. Among operating systems, Research In Motion had the largest smartphone market share.

The survey showed only a slight loss by the two industry leaders from the period ending in September, a 1.4 percent drop for Motorola to 23.4 percent, and a one percent slip by RIM to 41.6 percent.

Bar codes are getting hip. For decades, retailers and manufacturers have used these patterns of black dots, lines, and squares to encode pricing and other data onto products and supplies. Now, bar codes are gaining currency as an easy way for cell-phone users to view ads, coupons, and other information instantly.

Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it will launch another Android-based smartphone from Motorola next month. The Motorola Devour will be the first phone on Verizon's national network to feature MOTOBLUR -- an application and service suite that provides users with dynamically pushed Internet content via a unique user interface.

Google means business. According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the search-and-everything-else giant is planning an enterprise app store, with a launch as early as March. The move would be an additional challenge to Microsoft's domination of office and business software.

The online store would contain third-party applications and services related to Google Apps. These enhancements could include additional security features, the ability to import data from other apps, and more.

Google Solutions Marketplace