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Until now, the smartphone market has been divided between the main operators, the most blatant example being the agreement between Apple and AT&T. Each brand has its own app ecosystem. More than 300,000 applications will be accessible in the Apple App Store by the end of 2010, and between 50,000 and 75,000 applications will be provided in the Android Market.

Applications are the symbol of the smartphone, but also one of its main values.

For brands that have invested in the mobile app market or want to do so, the breakup of market forces has caused them to multiply applications across platforms. Strategically speaking, smartphones’ individual OS’s maintain control over the attractive and steadily growing market by forcing developers to adapt to a new format for each ecosystem and seeking the consent of the OS owner before an app can hit the market. Apple, Google, Blackberry and Nokia are engaged in a format war that forgets the consumer and constrains brands.

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Tablet computers have been around for a while, but they didn’t really capture the imagination until last year, when rumors of the Apple Tablet swirled with a fury.

Deloitte predicts that netbook-sized tablets – NetTabs – will fill in the space between notebooks and smartphones, reaching perhaps $1 billion in 2010.

NetTabs are netbook-sized tablets whose functionalities are modeled after smartphones. Their cost will be in the $400-$800 range.

“With a new form factor and significant processing capacity, connected portable devices will likely be purchased by tens of millions of people in 2010,” according to Deloitte. “These devices have an advantage over smartphones—which are small for watching videos or web browsing—and notebooks, netbooks, and ultra-thin PCs, which are too heavy, or expensive.

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Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs unveiled Lenovo’s first smartbook today at an analyst meeting in New York.

Smartbooks will bridge the gap between smartphones and netbooks, offering better battery life than the computer but with richer offerings than the phone.

The Lenovo smartbook is about the size of a hand and has a full-size screen and keyboard. Like a smartphone, it has constant wifi connection and has an “instant-on” bootup. The Linux-based user interface consists of six large widgets for things like email and Facebook.

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Motorola announced its first Android handset device today: The Motorola Cliq, with “social skills.” A new, high-performance smartphone is the focus of the Schaumberg, IL-based company’s hope to boost device sales and improve revenue.

Since the success of the Razr several years ago, Motorola has not been making much impression in the wireless consumer market, as independent analyst Jeff Kagan told ComputerWorld today. “Motorola has been stumbling around in the dark,” he says. “This Cliq could be the biggest opportunity for Motorola in many years.”

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Analysts say that the Dow is mimicking the way it acted during the Great Depression. The good news? It will have to act this way another sixteen months to reach the true dustbowls-and-Oakies nadir.

More good news? For Apple, at least, whose sales have yet to be hurt, despite an industry-wide collapse in PC revenue.

TBR analyst Ezra Gottheil says that Apple’s PC unit sales were up 9 percent in December. This while PC revenue overall dropped 18 percent in Q4 2008.

The overall revenue loss was not due to a significant decline in unit sales but to a drop in what people spent, as the average selling price (ASP) of PCs fell 13 percent.

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MIT researchers unveiled a cheap, portable touchscreen device at this week’s Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference in Long Beach, Calif.

MIT’s Fluid Interface’s group built the “sixth sense” device from about $300 worth of store-bought parts. It can turn any surface into a touchscreen.

The wearable device is made of a webcam, smartphone, mirrors, and projector. Colored finger caps which are read by the webcam complete the ensemble.

Augmented reality devices bring the information of the Internet to the physical world, usually with a smartphone as interface. The MIT device differs from other augmented reality apps that we’ve seen in that it can turn any surface into a touchscreen, thereby melding two emerging paradigms.

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Skype for Windows Mobile released their Beta 2.5 Tuesday with improved sound quality, better stability and a more intuitive user interface. The Windows Mobile application adheres to the familiar, full Skype on personal computers with free calls to Skype contacts, free instant messaging, and the functionality to call phones and mobiles with Skype Credit or a subscription.

Skype Lite for Mobile was also announced available for download. The original “thin client” was released in April, and is now available for a wider selection of mobile phones. As it does not require a smartphone, WiFi, or a computer connection, the application functionality is much different from the PC or Windows Mobile version: Skype contact calls, IM and international calls still take standard plan minutes, but do not add any long distance charges. The Lite Beta works only on compatible models from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

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While smartphones are increasingly becoming cost-efficient options for replacing PCs, and while Blackberry and Apple have made the smartphone a lifestyle, competitors are seeing diminishing returns during the recession.

There seems to be a peeling away of the chaff during these tough times. Gartner’s new report focuses on the declining growth of smartphone sales, but their research makes something apparent: iPhones and Blackberries are selling just fine. In fact, sales are surging.

It’s their competitors who are seeing the decline. While overall sales are up this year, they have fallen off earlier 2008 trends. The difference in growth/decline is astounding: Apple is up 327.5 percent, Research in Motion, makers of Blackberry, is up 81.7 percent, and HTC is up 25.9 percent from 2007.

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In tandem with the release of the G1 through T-Mobile last week comes the full Android Market. With a fledgling collection of applications available, the list is not that impressive, but there already seem to be some userful and/or entertaining options available. An extensive list of reviews are available on the AndroidApps YouTube channel from San Francisco-based AppVee, an application review site currently in beta. A selection from AndroidApp reviews, without Brian’s Ben Stein-styled narrative, follows:

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A lot has been written lately about mobile banking (also known as M-mobile), whether or not it will become as popular as online banking currently is. Surely it will, but not until smartphones are available to a wider demographic.

The biggest thing preventing online banking customers from mobile banking is lack of Internet access on their phones: according to a survey, 72% do not access the internet from their phones, and an additional 8% check it less than once a month. Only 8% checked the internet more than twenty times a month via Mobile.

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