MediaFile

Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies like HTC and Samsung who are betting on the platform, analysts said.

The smartphone market will grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, research firm Gartner said. Android, a distant No. 2 to Nokia’s Symbian platform just last year, will increase its market share to 39 percent in 2011, while Symbian’s share will roughly halve to 19 percent following Nokia’s decision to dump the platform. Apple’s iPhone platform will be slightly bigger than Symbian this year, while Research In Motion will control 13 percent of the market and Microsoft Windows Phone 6 percent.

Sales of cameraphones will grow to more than 1 billion handsets this year, helped by fast growth at the high end of the market, Strategy Analytics said.

Moody’s cut its credit rating on Nokia, citing the Finnish company’s weakening market position and uncertainty over its transition to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. HTC overtook Nokia in market capitalization for the first time on Thursday. Nokia still has higher volumes, selling 19 phones for each HTC phone sold last year. But its average sale price was just $85 compared with HTC’s $360, according to Strategy Analytics.

The FCC adopted data roaming rules that would allow smartphones to access the Internet in areas across the country not covered by their wireless carrier, forcing carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless to offer “reasonable” roaming rates. Under the rules, wireless carriers would be free to negotiate the terms of the agreements, and could institute safeguards to prevent congestion or harm to their networks from roaming traffic.

AS CES wraps up in Las Vegas, here are two clips showcasing cool technology from the floor, one from an unknown company, another from one of the big boys. Each displays the kind of keen forward thinking that can be found all over the Las Vegas show.

Here is an demonstration of Fingerist, from Evenno. Yes he is “strumming” “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple — on an iPod Touch.

And here is a display of one possible future of massive multi-user computing power, from Intel. I wish I had tech like that to help quicken the time it took to post to this very blog.

The nascent smartbook market got a big nudge forward on Friday, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest personal computer maker.

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s PC division, turned up on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show during a keynote address by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to demo a device based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip and running Google’s mobile Android software.

There was no formal product unveiling, but HP showed off a smartbook with multitouch capability, and Bradley spoke with apparent interest on the  category, which is just beginning to build steam.

The world’s biggest microchip company, known for some of the most dramatic advances in the tech world, this week decided to ask software developers and salespeople for help.

At its annual developers’ conference in San Francisco this week, Intel Corp put up a dozen or so whiteboards across the Moscone Center venue,  soliciting answers to the big questions: from how tech might improve business to what you might want technology to do, if it could do anything.

But the answers, scribbled in blue marker, were a mix of practical suggestions like a handheld portable video conferencing device, perennial gripes and whimsy – perfect date machine, anyone?

LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Once they were warriors battling one another on the digital battlefield. Nowadays, Microsoft and Nokia are worriers, huddling together for comfort.

The world's top phone and software companies need each other to compete with Apple, Google and Blackberry-maker Research in Motion (RIM), whose products increasingly define what users expect from phones and charge premium prices in consequence.

In the market for so-called "smartphones", Deutsche Bank estimates Apple and RIM now take home more than half of all profits, despite producing less than a third of high-end mobile phones. Nokia held a 45 percent share of the smartphone market in June, according to Gartner Inc. (Table 2 in Gartner release)