More leaked info in the form of a leaked BlackBerry roadmap is making the rounds on the World Wide Web, shedding some light on forthcoming new touch-screen devices to come out of Research in Motion’s (RIM’s) Canada-based stable. 

 

There appears to be a new touch-screen smartphone, codenamed the Malibu, on the way (Q1 of 2012), which sports a similar look to the current Curve. It is reported to be powered by an 800 MHz CPU, a 5 megapixel snapper as well as boasting a 3.25" display sticking with the current Bold’s screen resolution of 480 x 360.

 

Next up is the Bold Touch, codenamed Montana (Q3 of 2011), as well as a CDMA version of the BlackBerry Storm 3 called the Monaco (also Q3 of this year). The former will apparently be kitted out with a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm processor and users will get to employ a 2.8" touch-enabled display (640 x 480 pixel resolution) for input (along with its QWERTY keyboard).

 

RIM is also reportedly working on an update to BlackBerry OS 6 (version 6.1) that will offer new “liquid graphics” in order to boost the user experience, as well as an improved web browser that will make use of hardware acceleration.

 

 

 

 

UK business publication City A.M. on Wednesday reported that HTC will be unveiling two new Facebook-branded smartphones during next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 

 

According to Reuters, Facebook has now denied this report. “This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programming interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way,” stated Dan Rose, head of business development at FB.

 

HTC manufactured the original Google smartphone, the Nexus, but Samsung has produced its successor, the Nexus S.

 

 

 

There are now over two billion Internet users around the globe according to Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the United Nation’s (UN’s) International Telecommunications Union. Mobile phone subscriptions have also crossed a significant milestone, surpassing the five billion mark.

 

“At the beginning of the year 2000 there were only 500 million mobile subscriptions globally and 250 million Internet users,” Toure stated. “By the beginning of this year 2011 those numbers have mushroomed to over five billion mobile users and two billion subscribers to the Internet.”

 

Telecommunications firm Ericsson has also estimated that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions (devices such as USB dongles and embedded modules which utilises HSPA and LTE etc.), will cross the billion mark before the end of this year.

 

 

Nokia has released its Q4 2010 financial results, with the Finnish company posting an operating profit of €884 million, which is down 23% year-on-year, and net sales of €12.65 billion, which is up 6% compared to this period last year.

 

The company managed to sell over five million of their new Symbian^3-running smartphones, while their converged mobile device (mostly Symbian-running phones, but also includes mobile computers) volumes climbed to 28.3 million units in Q4 2010, which is up 36% year-on-year and up 7% compared to Q3 of 2010. 

 

Nokia’s preliminary estimated international mobile device market share amounted to 31% during Q4 of 2010, which is down from an estimated 35% in Q4 of 2009.

 

Downloads from Nokia’s Ovi Store now amounts to over four million per day, which is up from 2.3 million per day announced in October 2010.

 

 

Microsoft has announced that the amount of licences sold for its Windows 7 operating system (OS) has surpassed the 300 million mark. 

 

To illustrate the global reach of this PC OS, the Redmond-based outfit has provided us with this very useless, but none-the-less interesting fact. This fact being that if you were to line up 300 million Windows 7 retail boxes next to each other they would go round the world one and a half times. More than one out of five internet-connected PCs around the world are operating on a version of Windows 7.