China to pass US in smart phone shipments in 2012

China and India have been leading shipments of cellphones for a long time. This is another very interesting data point that shows that China is now leading in the shipment of smartphones. This brings an valuable question: what are the key applications used on these phones: social media, games, enterprise applications, all of the above?

Here's a CNET article talking about the top 5 hottest smart phone apps in 2011: LBS, messaging, photo, lifestyle, blogging. Apple and Google are still leading in Gartner's Mobile Consumer Application Platform

Smart phone shipments top PCs for the first time ever

We have reached a very interesting inflection point: more smartphones are shipped every day than PCs. This is radically changing the way applications should be designed, distributed and consumed. Developers are already designing their applications with a mobile interface first. With the back-end moving to the cloud and the front-end to mobile devices, we are at a very important junction in the world of IT. On a less serious note, there are now more Apple iPhones sold per second than there are babies born in the world.

AT&T to bring out Nokia phone with Windows

Last week, Steve Ballmer joined Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in unveiling the Lumia 900, their newest phone at a press event in Las Vegas (ahead of CES). The device represents Nokia and Microsoft's best chance yet to break Google and Apple's hold on the U.S. smartphone market. The new phone will use AT&T's LTE wireless data network. Since this is Nokia and Microsoft's (last?) chance to disrupt the most lucrative phone market, I can't wait to get my hands on one of them and experience the new device. I also would like to hear about their developer plans.