Mobile Phone Sales: Something Has to Give

Samsung, one of the five largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world, recently raised its forecast for 2010 unit sales to 25 million. The South Korean company also expects to sell 50 million handsets next year.

No one believes that the mobile phone market will double in 2011, so the Samsung statement suggests it expects to take a significant amount of market share.

If the company is right, the only real question who loses. It won't be Apple, as Samsung is stronger in the feature phone market. For similar reasons, it shouldn't be Android devices.

That leaves the other big players in feature phones, or the weaker players in smartphones. Either that, or Samsung is just wrong.

Too Many Cell Phone Companies Expect Huge Unit Growth - 24/7 Wall St

Social Networking, Gaming Key for Tweens, Teens

Social networking and gaming increasingly are prevalent in children's lives. Facebook is now the favorite website among tween (8 to 11) boys and teen (12 to 15) girls.

Online games dominate for boys and girls ages 8 to 11. 91 percent of tween boys and 93 percent of tween girls play games online.

M2 Research - Tracking entertainment technology and trends

Google TV Today

It's hard to tell what Google TV, or similar initiatives, will look like and feature in the future. But here's what it offers today.

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Teens ages 12 to 17 send and receive a median of five times more texts per day than adult texters, according to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

But that's probably not the most-important finding. The data also show that use of texting is growing in every age demographic.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of adults who text send one to 10 texts per day, compared to 22 percent of teens.

The percentages of texting adults and teens who send 11 to 20 and 21 to 50 average daily texts are fairly similar. Where teens begin to outpace adults is in the percentage who send 51 to 100 average texts daily (18 percent of teens, seven percent of adults) and more notably in the percentage who send 101-plus average texts daily (29 percent of teens, eight percent of adults).

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Angry Bird Creators on Why Such Games are So Compelling

If you like games, "Angry Birds" is worth a try. If you fear wasting too much time, don't go there.

Why Apple Hasn't Signed More Studios

Though Disney and News Corp. have agreed to allow Apple to sell content at 99 cents per episode or show, other studios are balking.

As typically is the case for changing rights arrangements in the TV content ecosystem, the issue for studios is the disruption of other parts of the revenue ecosystem.

The 99-cent price tag that represents a steep discount from the TV episodes already offered on iTunes for about $3.

Apparently some executives are worried about devaluation of the content, not just for online consumption, but also "downstream" release windows such as DVD and syndication.

As typically is the case, content owners are trying to protect existing big revenue streams while slowly growing the new channels. But the bigger risk right now is cannibalizing the big revenue channels in favor of much-smaller ancillary channels.

Why Apple rental plan alienated most studios

Prepaid Market Cracks With Verizon Smartphone Offerings

Prepaid customers traditionally have had to live with a selection of devices that intentionally did not include the top devices sold in the postpaid market. But that has taken a huge change with Verizon's new willingness to sell even its leading devices on a prepaid basis.

At least at Verizon, the difference between prepaid and postpaid offerings is based more on payment options and subsidized or full price phones than anything else. That is a big change, indeed.

Verizon Wireless also has launched a new "3G Prepaid" data package that lets customers access unlimited data on select 3G smartphones and multimedia phones for $30 monthly access.

Multimedia phone customers also have the option of selecting a new $10 monthly data package for 25 MB per month ($.20/MB overage). These new prepaid data packages are available at Verizon Wireless stores already, and will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning Sept. 28, 2010.

Supported smartphone devices include:

BlackBerry Curve 8330
BlackBerry Curve 8530
BlackBerry Storm 9530
BlackBerry Storm2 9550
BlackBerry Tour 9630
BlackBerry Bold 9650

Palm Pre Plus
Palm Pixi Plus

DROID by Motorola
Motorola DEVOUR
DROID X by Motorola
DROID 2 by Motorola
DROID Eris by HTC
DROID Incredible by HTC
LG Ally

3G Multimedia phones available include:

LG enV TOUCH
LG enV 3
LG Chocolate TOUCH
LG VX8360
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Renown
Nokia Twist
Casio EXILIM