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AT&T announced today that it plans to expand its line of 3G-connected netbooks with the HP Mini 110. The carrier expects to begin shipping the Mini 110 on November 22, which will cost $199 after a mail-in rebate and signing a two-year contract. Plans will include a 200MB limit for $35 per month, or a hefty 5GB for $60, which is paired with free access to some 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots in the US.

The HP Mini 110 features a 10.1" LED display, an Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, an HP webcam, an integrated microphone, and Windows 7. The system weighs in at 2.57lbs and will ship with HP QuickSync to automatically sync files with home or work PCs when connected to the same network. Also included is the AT&T Communication Manager (ACM) 7.0 which automatically connects the system to AT&T hotspots.

Of course, if mobile wireless connectivity isn't important to you, HP offers the Mini 110 for $300 through its online store.

The new world of multi-touch mobiles is expanding beyond devices like the iPhone as more manufacturers embrace the technology. Asus is the next vendor to begin offering such devices, launching the first multi-touch netbook.

The Asus Eee PC T91MT is an Atom Z520-based unit, using a tablet construction for the 8.9" LED-backlit display. As you'd expect from a multi-touch device, it's aimed at providing useful manipulation with hands alone -- though Asus includes a stylus with it as well. Multi-touch aside, you'll be missing other features with the default configuration including 1GB of RAM and only 32GB of storage (granted it is an SSD).


The system looks quite nice in the demo shots, and judging from the listed weight (less than 1kg) it will be easy to carry on the move. It ships with Windows 7, which has a wide variety of multi-touch features, such as gesture support. Asus' Eee PC T91MT marks another first for the company, which gave rise to the netbook market a few years back, and other venders can be expected to follow suit soon enough.

Earlier this week Microsoft rolled out the Zune HD firmware 4.3 update, which among other things, introduced support for "upcoming 3D games and applications." It didn’t take long for them to deliver on that promise, as the company if finally letting Zune HD owners put its player's Tegra chip to the test with a handful of new titles.

Available for download on the Zune Marketplace, the new 3D games include PGR: Ferrari Edition, Lucky Lane Bowling, Vans Sk8: Pool Service, Piano, Checkers, and Audiosurf: Tilt. Most of them look worthwhile, and more importantly, they're all free. You will have to deal with a brief ad upon start-up, though. Check out a description of each title from Microsoft after the jump.

Motorola's new foray into the world of smartphones, paired with Android, appears to be going quite well. According to initial analysis following up the first weekend of sales, current estimates indicate Motorola has sold at least 100,000 of the new Droid, around half of the total supply that retailers had available. With considerable less hype surrounding it than other phones and a limited presence in stores, that's not a bad figure. It remains to be seen if the device has staying power, which will likely be influenced largely by Google and the Android Market.

Exact sales figures aren't available, with this number being only an estimate. Still, it's good news for Motorola as well as Android. If the trend for the Droid follows anything resembling the BlackBerry or iPhone, the availability of apps will determine its future. Many are optimistic, with some predicting that Android will take a firm hold of the market in less than three years.

Android has yet to have a "runaway success" that makes it easy to believe such predictions, but small victories add up, and the Droid is certainly a good start for Motorola.

After reporting a third-quarter loss of $478 million and 545,000 customers, Sprint plans to let go between 2,000 and 2,500 people -- about 6% of its 42,000-strong workforce -- by the end of this year. The company expects the job cuts to reduce annual expenses by $350 million, and it will dole out $60 million to $80 million in severance payments during the fourth quarter.

The layoffs will affect positions across the entire company, including its wholesale unit and even contractors. The carrier said it would be careful to ensure that the restructuring doesn't impact its recently improved customer service record.

When Sprint's current CEO Dan Hesse took over in late 2007, poor service was a common complaint among customers. Support has improved so drastically in the last two years, however, that the company has discontinued using 27 call centers.

Including this bout of layoffs and the transfer of 6,000 employees to Ericsson, Sprint has reduced its global workforce by some 16,500 in 2009.

Nokia is facing a bit of bitter music this week, following an announcement from the company that they are issuing a recall for a substantial number of chargers for their mobile phones. A decent number of chargers manufactured earlier this year have a potential defect in which the cover could slip off, posing an electrical hazard.

While most people know better than to touch electrical components with their bare hands -- especially when plugged in -- Nokia (and no doubt many others) sees the defect as a safety risk and want all the units returned for replacement.

Unlike many recall processes, this one apparently started at Nokia's behest, upon discovering the issue during internal testing. That's much better than being taken to court before issuing a recall, since at least now Nokia has ground to stand on saying they were being proactive. If you own a defective charger, Nokia is replacing the units for free.

Nokia hasn't released information on exactly how many chargers are affected, but it's potentially upward of 14 million -- though, that figure could be inflated. A third party manufactures the part, and Nokia may not have figured out just how many are in the field. Even if the number was that high, it would still pale in comparison to the battery recall a few years ago. That particular issue set them back a substantial amount.

To handle any recall requests, Nokia has set up a website intended specifically to help people identify the chargers and get a return going. If this recall should pan out anything like their previous one, Nokia will likely try to go after the manufacturer, BYD Electronic.

Nvidia's Tegra has gained a decent amount of popularity in recent months. It currently forms the brains of Microsoft’s Zune HD and is poised to capitalize on smartphones too. With the company hoping its system-on-a-chip product to account for as much as 50% of their revenue in the next few years, it comes as no real surprise to learn a successor is already on the works.

According to Fudzilla's “high ranking industry sources,” Tegra 2 is expected to drop in 2010 with basically twice the computational and graphics power of its predecessor. The updated chip will reportedly feature a dual-core ARM9 CPU, whereas the existing Tegra uses the ARM11 platform, and GeForce 9 based dual GPUs for a superior graphic performance and perhaps mobile PhysX.

As expected, the main target for this new chip will be the smartphone market, but Nvidia also hopes to draw interest from the automotive industry, media-player segment and other portable electronic manufacturers.

As HP seeks to reinforce their top spot for global PC shipments, the company is planning to cut prices all around, especially in the very low-cost laptop arena. Acer isn't far behind them, and is prepared to initiate a price war with HP over the coming year.

With a substantial hardware lineup already deployed, Acer is well-equipped to offer cheap hardware in general. With this renewed approach, it'll hopefully benefit end-users by bringing a lot of very low-cost laptops to the market next year. If HP and Acer are both planning to target the low-cost market, you can assume a lot of other vendors will follow as well.

Acer's intentions to drop pricing may help them do more than just compete with HP. It may also further a related goal Acer has set for themselves, hoping to ship over 40 million notebooks next year. Becoming the number one vendor worldwide would have other benefits as well, such as giving them substantial leverage with suppliers, shipping companies and retailers -- impressive for a company that was a fairly small player in the notebook market a few years back.

Customers aren't all about price, though. Form and function are important, especially with the sheer amount of notebook manufacturers offering everything from shrunken netbooks to desktop replacements. If there's one negative aspect of price competition among vendors, it's disappearing features. Hopefully that won't be the case, and the lower prices in store won't come at the cost of useful functionality.

Google's next major update to its mobile platform, Android 2.0, was officially unveiled today. Codenamed Eclair, many new features appear to have been added in this release, including improved synchronization -- with support for Microsoft Exchange accounts and contacts -- and a new Quick Contact feature that enables users to email, text or call a contact by tapping on their photo.

The touch screen keyboard has been improved as well and now uses multi-touch to better recognize quick typing. Android's web browser has similarly been upgraded with multi-touch and double-tap zoom support, a refreshed user interface with an actionable address bar, bookmarks sorted by thumbnail, and support for HTML5. Other notable improvements include a new Bluetooth API and more in-depth camera controls.

Motorola's new Droid handset, which is due to be released in the United States later this month, is rumored to be the first device to run the new Android 2.0 Eclair software. Check out a video highlighting some of the new features after the jump.

Microsoft is still working to set things right with customers hit by the recent T-Mobile Sidekick data-loss disaster, releasing a downloadable recovery tool on Tuesday. Affected users can use the utility to view all of the contacts on your device as of October 1, and that data can be restored with a few clicks and a confirmation.

Since you've probably already added some of the contacts back, the tool will give you a few options on how to handle duplicates: you can keep both sets of contacts, merge them, or simply leave your current set of contacts as is. You can also edit any duplicates on your Sidekick after restoration.

Microsoft says it is still working "around the clock" and is making solid progress on the next phase of the restoration process, which will include photos, notes, to-do lists, marketplace data and high scores. In the meantime, at least you can get your contacts back -- plus T-Mobile is offering a free month of data service (for the $20 plan) and a $100 T-Mobile gift card.

AT&T has reportedly filed suit in San Francisco today against several major manufacturers of cell phone LCD screens, accusing them of a price-fixing conspiracy. The carrier says Samsung, LG, Chunghwa, AU Optronics and others consorted to artificially jack up prices on LCD displays. AT&T says it purchased some 300 million cell phones at exaggerated prices from companies involved in the scheme.

More specifically, AT&T claims that Samsung and six other display makers "formed an international cartel illegally to restrict competition in the United States in the market for LCD panels." If true, AT&T has quite a case -- 300 million handsets is many times the carrier's entire subscriber base. It wouldn't be too much of a surprise either, as Hitachi, LG, Chunghwa and Sharp have all been nailed in previous LCD price-fixing schemes -- and the latter three pleaded guilty in November, paying more than half a billion in criminal fines.

In addition to overtaking Dell's second place spot for global PC sales, Acer says it is looking to ship an ambitious number of handsets. The computer maker has set a goal to sell 400,000 to 500,000 of its own handsets this year, and next year it wants to move between 1.5 and 2 million units, according to an internal source cited by DigiTimes.

In addition to cooperating with Taiwanese Telco Far EasTone, Acer has landed sales agreements with numerous other carriers, such as Hong Kong's CSL, France's SFR and Bouygues, and Italy's Wind. Acer is rumored to be teaming up with a telecom carrier in the United States next year, but nothing official has been announced yet.

Meanwhile, rival Dell is said to be working on an AT&T-backed Android-powered smartphone.

Spring Design has announced the market's first e-book reader powered by Google's Android operating system. Called "Alex," the reader will boast full browser capabilities, and will be equipped with a "Duet Navigator" dual screen display. One is a 6" E-Ink EPD display for regular reading, while the other is a 3.5" color touch LCD panel for Web browsing and is actually an entirely self-contained Android device according to Gearlog.
The device includes earphones and features stereo speakers, an SD card slot, as well as browser bookmarks and history. Alex supports Wi-Fi connectivity and has integrated mobile 3G support for EV-DO and GSM networks -- though Spring Design has yet to secure a carrier. The company says it's in discussion and enlisting major content partners, with plans to launch the device for "selected strategic partners" by the end of this year.

Sprint is reportedly locked in to purchase its affiliate iPCS for $831 million ($24 a share, a 34% premium), in a deal that will bring an end to the companies' legal disputes. Sprint will fork over some $426 million in cash, in addition to eating $405 million of iPCS' debt. The companies have been bickering for years over territorial exclusivity rights.

The agreement may allow Sprint to keep the iDEN assets it was given 360 days to divest back in February, after a court ruled that Sprint violated agreements with iPCS by operating its iDEN networks in territory that iPCS held exclusive rights to. Sprint is expecting to gain more than 700,000 direct customers and 270,000 wholesale customers from iPCS' 12.6 million in the deal, adding to its 49 million-strong customer base.

The companies hope to close the deal in late 2009 or early 2010 upon regulatory approval. Following news of the acquisition, iPCS stock climbed 33% to $23.83 per share -- Sprint's remained mostly flat at $3.47.

Asus is preparing to launch a new multi-touch capable device coinciding loosely with the pending release of Windows 7. The Eee PC T91MT is similar in form and function to the previously released T91, with this model getting a few notable improvements. The most important of these improvements is the upgraded touchscreen, which will be multi-touch capable, a boon to potential Windows 7 users. It'll also be getting a storage upgrade, with a 32GB SSD coming stock on the device.

Asus has also decided to push back the larger Eee PC T10 touchscreen notebook. Originally intended to have released at numerous points earlier in the year, Asus has apparently been met with more setbacks. As it stands, the launch window for the 10 inch model remains up in the air, though it's tentatively set for December. Getting it before the end of the year would be good, but if they release it too late in December they will miss the "holiday season" window and likely a good portion of sales.

Asus has been busy on the Eee front, expanding the hardware lineup to include many types of devices including a nettop earlier this month. I hope they keep the innovative streak going; they pioneered the "netbook" (even if such a development was inevitable) and likely have a lot of other good ideas waiting to be turned into hardware.

Update #2 (10/15): Microsoft has announced they have been able to recover almost all user data from the Sidekick cloud servers. It had been suggested this data could have been destroyed and thus become unrecoverable, but apparently the potential disaster has been contained to cause a minimal damage, besides the service interruptions Sidekick users have been suffering in the last couple of weeks. Here's an excerpt from Microsoft's official statement:

"We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible."

Update: T-Mobile recently informed that prospects for recovering 'some' of the lost data is there, hoping that a majority of their customers will be able to recover their personal content. In addition they are offering a free month of data service (only the $20 data plan) and a $100 T-Mobile gift card to those affected.

As expected, Nokia has worked out an arrangement with AT&T to sell its Booklet 3G for $300 when customers sign up for a two-year contract. The subsidy effectively brings the netbook's price down from $600 on the carrier-free option, but ties users to a data plan that costs about $60 a month.

It remains to be seen how strong consumer demand will be at that price point -- many of these devices can be purchased outright for less than $400 and connect to the web using Wi-Fi. In all fairness, though, Nokia's Booklet 3G does stand out from the crowd with its fanless, lightweight design made from a single piece of machined aluminum and its alleged 12 hours of battery life.


The device has a 10-inch screen with a 1280x720 pixel resolution and can connect to bigger displays using an HDMI port. Under the hood there is an Intel Atom Z530 running at 1.6 GHz, as well as 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive and Windows 7. Other noteworthy specs include a 1.3-megapixel webcam with integrated microphone, Bluetooth, assisted GPS, and even an accelerometer.

The Booklet 3G will be available exclusively in Best Buy stores by mid-November, with pre-orders starting on October 22. AT&T said the mini-laptop would also be offered with other rate plans at still to be announced prices.

HP may be gearing up to refresh its Mini 311 netbook with the launch of Windows 7. According to MyHPMini.com, tucked away in the Mini 311's Maintenance and Service Guide is information showing the system's future specification offering. For what it is, the Mini 311 is already pretty well equipped, featuring an 11.6" 1366x768 display, Nvidia Ion LE graphics, Intel Atom N270, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD.

If the manual is any indication, HP's flagship netbook will soon be available with the full Nvidia Ion platform (only with Windows 7), 2GB or 3GB of RAM, an 80GB SSD alongside a 250GB or 320GB 5400RPM HDD (only with Windows 7), and 32-bit editions of Windows 7 Starter, Basic, Premium, as well as Professional. Note that the current Mini 311 does support up to 3GB of RAM -- HP just doesn't offer more than 1GB as an option.
It's unclear whether or not the company will actually ship the Mini 311 with your choice of the four mentioned Windows 7 versions. The netbook is currently priced at $400 and Windows 7 models are expected cost an extra $75, so with the bumped hardware specs you'll probably be plunking a hefty coin for HP's upcoming Mini 311.

We recently published an update on this story here.

After numerous service interruptions during the past week, on Sunday afternoon T-Mobile informed owners of the Sidekick smartphone that user data, which is stored in Microsoft/Danger's servers could have been lost for good. By design, the T-Mobile Sidekick doesn't store much of its user data on the device itself, but uses the cloud for storing address book information, photos, calendar and application downloads. And while service outages are still commonplace in today's cloud-based services, this could be one of the most high-profile data loss occurrences in recent history.

Reportedly, the data loss was caused by a failed upgrade to Danger's storage area network, only to discover later that no backup was available. Microsoft's involvement only aggravates the issue (they acquired Danger in 2008). Undoubtedly, this will come as a complete blow to Microsoft's image, both as a cloud service provider (see Azure) and to its mobile platform division, having just recently announced the Windows Phone initiative.

An official follow-up statement is expected Monday regarding the status of the potential backups. In the meantime, T-Mobile is alerting its affected customers (number not disclosed), letting them know they shouldn't remove the Sidekick's battery, reset the devices or let them lose power. Syncing with a desktop application should be a safe measure to be taken at this point if your Sidekick has some info on it.

Could a newcomer found on less than 2% of the world's newest smartphones end up becoming one of the largest players in the world? Such is the case with Android, according to Gartner, who predicts that the OS will pick up the pace dramatically over the next few years. The firm expects Android to be responsible for upwards of 14% of the smartphone market by 2012.

Gartner is basing their predictions on Google's substantial stake in Android, which will see the software becoming highly integrated with popular Google services. It's probably a fair bet to say Android and Google services will go hand in hand -- how well those services translate to mobile computing is still up in the air, but the scenario seems plausible.

Google's already trying to make a name for themselves in cloud computing -- though they face stiff competition from many avenues. If Android really does have tight integration with online services, becoming the number two mobile OS in just a few years is certainly possible, but we can't expect Apple to sit idle. If Android starts to rocket forward, what will Cupertino's response be?

Dell's foray into ultra-mobile devices shows no signs of slowing. While they're not a huge name in the market, they certainly have the resources to give it a go -- which is why scattered reports of them crafting an Android device this year were no big surprise. If recent reports hold merit, Dell's upcoming smartphone will be Android-based and will be released through AT&T.

Teaming up with AT&T makes perfect sense, and it would be another name on the growing list of providers that support Android devices. Earlier in the year, fuzzy pictures of a concept smartphone from Dell caught the eye of many, though nothing official has emerged.

Whether Dell can be taken seriously as a competitor in the smartphone market remains to be seen -- but given the increasingly blurry line between "smartphones" and "ultra mobile PCs", Dell might be able to leverage their substantial stake in the mobile computing market to their advantage.

Will we have a Dell phone running Android next year?

In a rather unexpected move, AT&T has announced a momentous policy change that will enable VoIP iPhone applications to run on its wireless network. There are already quite a few available in the App Store, like Skype, Vonage, and Truphone, but up until now users who wanted to use them had to do it over a Wi-Fi connection.

The decision applies only to Apple's smartphone and is supposedly based on the "evaluation of customer expectations." Curiously the FCC is considering a proposal to formalize network neutrality principles, which would extend to wireless networks, and AT&T's reversal fits nicely into those rules. Furthermore, the government agency has been looking into carrier's business relationship with Apple to determine whether or not anti-competitive behavior has taken place.

AT&T's change in policy has no effect on Apple's rejection of the Google Voice application for the iPhone, nor it means that video streaming or other high-bandwidth applications over 3G will be allowed. Still, it’s an important step towards a more open model.

As expected, Microsoft announced the debut of the new "Windows Phone" brand today, along with the new My Phone synchronization service, Windows Marketplace for Mobile (with 246 applications available at launch), and of course a first wave of devices powered by the upgraded Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.


HTC and Samsung are at the head of the line offering smartphones based on Microsoft's latest platform, which comes as a long overdue response to Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and the like. The new version features a tweaked user experience, focusing on touch functionality, with a renewed push to integrate business and personal tasks. Unfortunately, Windows Mobile 6.5 is largely considered a stopgap measure until version 7 arrives in the second half of next year -- so you shouldn't expect any groundbreaking new features.

The launch comes as some of Microsoft's high-profile partners, including Motorola and Palm, have moved on to focus their attention on Android and WebOS respectively. It remains to be seen if Microsoft's latest efforts in the mobile space can help it reinvigorate both market share and developer attention.

Amazon introduced today a new payment processing tool for mobile devices, called "Mobile Payments Service." MPS includes a set of application programming interfaces (APIs), which allow developers and merchants to offer payment options to their customers within mobile websites and apps. The new service supports Amazon's "1-Click" checkout for quick transactions.

Using MPS, customers can complete a transaction in four seemingly hassle-free steps. When a shopper is ready to pay, they click on a "Pay with Amazon" button, which prompts them to sign in and select a payment option on file with Amazon, and then they must authorize the payment.

Things are similarly easy for developers and merchants already using Amazon's Payments Service on their websites. The service will detect when users are shopping from a mobile device, and switch over to the new Mobile Payments Service automatically.

Amazon's new payment system has already been adopted by Handmark, a mobile content store which offers games and apps across various platforms including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm OS, Windows Mobile , Symbian, and Java.

Over the weekend, Palm introduced a new patch for Pre users, which once again allows the handset to sync media with the most recent version if iTunes. With the release of webOS 1.2.1, Palm has defiantly brushed aside the words of Apple and the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), but its bravado may be more than meets the eye.

According to a blog post by Craig Hunter, Apple has long provided a legal, free method for other manufacturers to sync devices with iTunes. Instead of using Apple's USB-IF issued vendor ID, Hunter notes that all Palm has to do is use the iTunes music library XML file stored on the user's computer to create a sync utility for the Pre -- like BlackBerry's media sync. This would be ok with Apple, and it sidesteps the USB-IF. Why doesn't Palm take that route? Publicity.

The Pre's lackluster sales haven't been able to boost Palm back to their PDA heyday. By creating controversy, Palm brings much needed positive attention to its smartphone. People will see the Palm versus Apple news, but won't read into it enough to discover who the real bad guy is. As i4u so adequately put it, people will simply see a smaller company sticking it to a corporate behemoth.

By fixing the Pre's ability to sync every few weeks, Palm stands in the limelight for little expense -- but what if Apple were to stop responding? Is Palm instigating Cupertino for cheap press?

Gateway and Verizon are collaborating to release a new netbook with support for Verizon's 3G mobile broadband service. The Gateway LT2016u will be available through Verizon's website and stores on October 4, and will retail for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate, which will arrive in the form of a debit card. Naturally, Verizon expects customers sign a two-year mobile broadband contract. This includes 250MB of monthly access plus $.10 per MB overage for $39.99 a month, or 5GB plus $.5/MB overage at $59.99/month.


The LT2016u is outfitted with a 10.1" WSVGA LED display, an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, a .3 megapixel webcam, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB and VGA ports, a three-in-one media card reader, two speakers, a microphone, a six-cell battery, Windows XP Home, and weighs 2.95lbs. This netbook follows the launch of Gateway's LT3100 and LT2000, which debuted over the summer.

Research In Motion is preparing to release the anticipated BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac. Designed specifically for Mac users, it will be free to download on the company's Mac page come 10AM PDT Friday, October 2. The Mac edition of BlackBerry Desktop Manager allows people to sync data with Mac apps for contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes. Additionally, it can schedule back-ups, encrypt files, and even install updates.

Taking a step beyond the business realm, the new software also features BlackBerry Media Sync, which supports the synchronization of iTunes music. Users can choose the playlists they want, and all the associated tracks will be transferred to the handset. The utility requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or higher, so the laggards running Tiger are out of luck. BlackBerry devices must have BlackBerry OS 4.2 and higher installed.

Research In Motion had a worse-than-predicted second quarter, and the current period doesn't look especially solid either. Earnings fell to $475.6 million or $.83 per share during the period ending August -- much less than the $1 per share analysts foresaw. This compares to $495.5 million or $.86 per share in the year-ago period.

Meanwhile, revenue rose 37% to $3.53 billion from $2.58 billion during the second quarter, and RIM is predicting it to be in the range of $3.6 billion to $3.85 billion for the present quarter -- shy of the $3.95 billion analysts were expecting.

The handset-maker is looking to ship between 9.2 million and 9.9 million new phones in the current period, as it attempts to expand beyond the corporate scene and snag a piece of the consumer market. The company reportedly held 55% of the US smartphone market share this June, compared to 40% from six months prior.

With Acer slowly creeping up on their marketshare, HP is planning to take some aggressive action in the notebook market to keep and improve their lead. Though there are estimates of Acer potentially replacing HP as the number one vendor worldwide, HP sees things differently, and is prepared to slash notebook prices all over their retail market. The move is intended to make HP's notebooks more attractive, which of course results in better sales.

The price cuts aren't necessarily coming at HP's expense, either. The sources cited suggest HP has been shopping for vendors with more aggressive pricing, at the cost of their own margin, and placing larger orders with vendors who offer such. Some of HP's production partners are expected to take profit hits because of this. How this will affect HP's earnings isn't mentioned; I suspect HP is attempting to minimize any impact to their bottom line while avoiding the loss of more ground to Acer.

At the moment HP is still very strong. They are number one in the notebook market, and Dell has been slipping slowly. Product strength will be key as well in the coming year, as the mobile market has been growing faster than ever before -- so pricing won't be everything.

E-Commerce Times is reporting that Verizon will offer the Pre in January as planned, despite recent rumors to the contrary. Yesterday, TheStreet.com published a story that claimed Verizon wouldn't carry the smartphone, due to friction over the Pre's mediocre sales performance and other discrepancies.

This is partially true, according to E-Commerce Times; Verizon and Palm have been scrapping over contract terms -- which is common. Carriers and device makers often struggle to settle on subsidy rates among other details. Being the largest wireless carrier in the US puts Verizon in a strong bargaining position, and the company isn't afraid to sidestep a deal -- Verizon turned down Apple's iPhone terms when it was first shopping for carriers.

Like TheStreet.com's report, E-Commerce Times has noted that the two companies could be locking horns over their respective application stores. Verizon may want its own VCast Store to back the Pre -- but Palm has its own. Neither company has responded directly to yesterday's rumor.