Those days are over, and the business has shifted. Now it’s Qualcomm and Samsung that supply the main processing engine in most of the world’s smartphones not made by Apple. And Apple designs its own chips.

Despite having landed its chips in devices such as the Motorola Droid and Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, TI has now admitted something of defeat.

The company just announced that it will re-focus its OMAP chip business on a wider set of “embedded markets” — chip industry code for things that aren’t personal computers or in this case wireless phones. The move, it says, offers greater business potential over the long term. Design cycles for the smartphone business are pretty harsh and costly — and incredibly competitive.

As part of the move, it says it will cut nearly 1,700 jobs, amounting to about 5 percent of its work force, which it says will reduce annual costs by $450 million by the end of next year.

TI execs hinted at the change two months ago, saying they planned to shift the company’s R&D resources toward developing chips for the automotive, industrial and other non-consumer markets.

As part of the change, TI says it expects to take a $325 million charge that it will record this quarter.

Here’s TI’s original announcement:

TI to reduce costs in Wireless business; OMAP™ processors and wireless connectivity solutions will focus on embedded markets

DALLAS, Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Consistent with previously stated strategic plans, Texas Instruments (TI) (TXN) announced today it will reduce costs and focus investments in its Wireless business on embedded markets with greater potential for sustainable growth. Cost reductions include the elimination of about 1,700 jobs worldwide.

TI previously outlined intentions to focus its OMAP processors and wireless connectivity solutions on a broader set of embedded applications with long life cycles, instead of its historical focus on the mobile market where large customers are increasingly developing their own custom chips. These changes require fewer resources and less investment.

“We have a great opportunity to reshape our OMAP processor and wireless connectivity product lines to concentrate on embedded markets. Momentum is already building with new embedded applications and a broad set of customers, and we are accelerating our efforts in these areas,” said Greg Delagi, senior vice president of Embedded Processing. “These job reductions are something we do with a heavy heart because they impact people we care deeply about. We will work closely with all employees affected by these changes to provide a range of assistance related to compensation, benefits and job search.”

As a result of these actions, the company expects annualized savings of about $450 million by the end of 2013. Total charges will be about $325 million, most of which will be accounted for in the current quarter. TI’s fourth-quarter outlook, published on October 22, did not comprehend these restructuring charges.

There are three new members of the Droid family of Android-running smartphones, all of them carrying the long-established Motorola brand name Razr. The name was one of many bits of the Motorola legacy in sight today as CEO Dennis Woodside, introduced first by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, declared that today was the “first day of the new Motorola.”

In its newness, it seems to be looking to draw strength from the old Motorola. Example one: Martin Cooper, the inventor for Motorola of the original handheld cellular phone — the same guy who in 1973 became famous for a PR stunt in which he wirelessly called rivals at Bell Labs in front of reporters assembled outside the New York Hilton — sat in the front row. Example two: Jim Wicks, the legendary head of Motorola’s design shop and the man who led the team that designed the original Razr that sold more than 130 million units and became the best-selling clamshell phone in history was also on hand. So no matter how you slice it, the new Motorola looks a lot like the old Motorola.

AllThingsD’s Lauren Goode and I sat down with Woodside after Motorola’s announcements today at New York’s Gotham Hall to talk about how the news fit into his longer-term vision for the company. My first question was about his reaction to today’s other downtown mobile event.

AllThingsD: I spent the earlier part of the day at Nokia’s big Lumia launch event with Microsoft. Nokia says its big differentiating factor is going to be photography. What will be Motorola’s?

Well, I think you saw the story today. We think speed and the focus on it really does matter. And getting LTE right is really hard. We’ve been at it for a while. There are lots of things you do with a device to make it run in a power-efficient manner that are not trivial. The last generation of the Maxx we’ve shown that we know how to do that. Another point is the design element, and the screens in particular. The edge-to-edge screen is also hard to get right. If you do it wrong the glass can break. A lot of people don’t want to compromise on the screen size. But they don’t want to haul around a large device.

So technically how did you fit a larger battery into something that slim with an enhanced display?

That is a strength of Motorola’s. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Jim Wicks, our senior vice president in charge of design, is here, and his team has been working getting as much as you can into as thin a device as possible. If you took these phones apart, there are hundreds of pieces that fit together like an incredible jigsaw puzzle. So it’s actually really hard, but something we do really well.

A lot of people were wondering if we might see a tablet from you today …

Not today, but we have some tablets in the market that have done reasonably well, but clearly we have aspirations to be a bigger player in that part of the market. I don’t have anything to say today, but stay tuned. It’s certainly an area we’ll be investing in.

If you could change something about, say, the Xoom tablet, what would it be? What would you focus on first?

A couple things. When the Xoom first came out, the state of Android was very different from what it is today. The content wasn’t the same. The function of Google Play. Going forward, the content story has to be very strong, and I think Google is focused on that. I think also price makes a huge different. One of the reasons we brought in Mark Randall from Amazon’s Lab126 is that price matters to consumers, especially in the tablet space.

Talk about the broader vision for Motorola now that it’s part of Google. What is it?

Motorola is going to be an innovator in Android hardware. And we’re starting with the devices that you see today. But these have been in the pipeline well before Google acquired the company. We were able to make some tweaks, but the teams are working on the next generation of devices.

What does Google bring to the table for you at Motorola?

First, a long-term mindset and a conviction. Look at past acquisitions. Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube in 2005, and a lot of people thought that wasn’t a good acquisition. And we spent a lot of time helping that business scale and build the business relationships it needed to survive. And now it’s an integral part of so many things. All the presidential election speeches are on it. It forms a fundamental part of how people engage with video around the world. That makes it a huge value. What’s it worth? It’s hard to know. But the point is that Google took a long-term perspective with it. It’s about having a long-term plan and then driving against a long-term technical vision that benefits consumers. For Motorola it’s that long-term mindset, and the long-term bet on mobility. That’s hugely valuable.

Does that long-term strategy include set-top boxes?

It’s a completely different business. It’s called the home division and it reports to me, but that is a radically different business. The mobile device business is inherently a consumer business with carriers as our partners. The set-top box business has a very different set of partners and consumers don’t usually choose their set-top boxes in those markets. It’s a completely different business and we run it separately.

Are you going to keep it?

We haven’t talked about any of our plans long-term for that business.

Five years out, do you see Motorola as a broad-based handset maker or do you think people will look at it as Google’s hardware division?

You have to look at how consumers are going to behave in five years. Look back five years ago. The iPhone had just come out and a lot of people had feature phones or maybe a BlackBerry. Five years from now the form factors are going to change radically. And the consumer is going to be thinking about wearables and tablets. They’ll still make phone calls, but I don’t know if the phone is going to look like it does now. But the device, the hardware that allows you to communicate and get on the Web in a mobile way is something that Motorola really does well.

Is there a way to turn off the automated, instant search results that appear rapidly when doing a Google search?

Most of the time I find them very annoying.

A:

Google says you can turn off the feature by clicking on the gear icon at the top right of any search results page and selecting “Search Settings.”

From there, go to the section called “Google Instant Predictions,” select “Never Show Instant Results,” and then click the “Save” box at the bottom of the page.

Q:

I am thinking of buying a Droid smartphone from Motorola and am concerned about the privacy of my personal data.

I was told by a Best Buy salesman that Android phones only back up their data to the cloud and don’t store it on one’s home PC like my current phone or the Apple iPhone. Is this true?

A:

Most, if not all, Android phones I’ve seen can optionally back up your personal data, such as contacts, to the cloud and don’t come with a computer program like Apple’s iTunes that does so. In fact, even Apple is now optionally allowing online backup, instead of backup to a computer. There are some third-party apps, which I haven’t tested, that will back up an Android phone to a PC. One is called Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and is at http://bit.ly/MTYaGJ.

Q:

I am looking at buying a well-equipped Windows 7 laptop, but wonder whether it would it be better to wait for the newer models to come out, especially as I worry that it might be costly to upgrade to Windows 8?

A:

Unless your current laptop is unusable, or you fear it’ll become so soon, I’d wait. Not only will you have more choices in the fall, they will be much better designed for Windows 8.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

“Saturday Night Live” spent 30 seconds pretty much destroying those efforts.

In a commercial spoof, SNL has a Verizon sales person touting LTE without really saying what it does, and also mocking the company for just throwing out all kinds of device names. What, a customer wonders, does all that really mean?

“Let’s say you’ve got the new HTC Thunderbolt, or even the LG Vortex. You can hook up your HTC or your LG to your 4G LTE and you’ll have Verizon’s 4G LTE in over 190 cities.”

“So, it’s faster?” the guy asks.

“Well, let’s say you’ve got the new Droid Razr by Motorola or the HTC Rezound or even the Samsung Galaxy Nexus,” the salesman says. “You are talking 4G LTE on almost our entire 3G footprint.”

One song is four seconds, the salesman continues. “The song is four seconds?” the confused customer asks, before the sales guy throws out more stats.

Verizon, the ad concludes, “It’s an old person’s nightmare.”

Anyway, it’s worth a watch:

Apple had asked the commission to block imports of Motorola phones such as the Droid and Droid X that run Google Inc.’s Android software, claiming they infringed on its patents.

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Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said his company plans to release fewer new models this year, in an effort to concentrate its marketing dollars.

“A lot of products that are roughly the same doesn’t drive the market to a new place,” Jha said on Tuesday in a roundtable meeting with reporters. Of course, it is an interesting statement from a company that released the Droid Bionic and Droid Razr in rapid succession, followed on Monday by the Droid Razr Maxx — a version of the Droid Razr with a bigger battery.

Jha noted that it was a delay in the Bionic that caused that product’s debut to be so close in timing to the Razr.

Asked whether he thinks Motorola would be better off if others also slowed their launches or if he prefers them to continue their current pace, Jha demurred.

“I made this decision independent of what the others will do,” he said. “We’re doing what we think is the right thing.”

Jha also said the company plans to pursue fewer new ideas in an effort to make more things stick.

The shift comes at a key time for Motorola, which is in the process of trying to sell itself to Google. The company also warned last week that fourth-quarter sales would come in below what most analysts had been expecting.

Last year the company introduced the notion of a lap dock in which phones could be plugged into a bigger screen and keyboard to perform many of the same tasks as a laptop.

Jha conceded that the product hasn’t been the commercial success it hoped nor did customers find it delivered the performance they were looking for.

However, Jha said that the company is making further refinements and still believes in the concept for the future.

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The company said the new Droid Razr will be the thinnest smartphone available at 7.1 millimeters, and has new features such as water resistance and a kevlar case. The phone will be available in November for $299. Motorola will begin preorders Oct. 27.

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In providing guidance along with its quarterly results, Motorola said it expects tablet sales to drop in the current quarter as its Xoom faces greater competition from a range of other tablets running Google’s Honeycomb operating system and as it prepares new products. Average selling prices have also dropped, in part as the company has cut prices.

On the plus side, the company said that a growing number of applications are starting to be made available for Android tablets. A mail-in update allowing Verizon Xoom customers to upgrade their device to support 4G LTE, originally due by June, is now slated for September.

Motorola said it expects total smartphone and tablet sales combined to be somewhere around 21 million to 23 million for the full year, with CEO Sanjay Jha saying that it has plans to offer a number of new smartphones in time for the back-to-school shopping season as well as two new LTE-ready tablets later this year.

Jha noted that the company had the benefit of being first to market among Android tablets with the Xoom, but that also posed some challenges.

“You have less time to cost optimize,” Jha said. The new tablets, he said, are designed to be more competitive on costs, adding later that carriers have reacted favorably to the forthcoming products and said that the company should be poised to do better in the fourth quarter.

The company said its delayed Droid Bionic — a dual-core 4G LTE phone — should be in stores in September with another LTE phone also due out before the end of the year.

“It’s my expectation that LTE will be a strong focus for carriers in the fourth quarter,” Jha said, saying that he believes Motorola will have a good position, though he declined to forecast how big that market will be.

Speaking on the company’s conference call with analysts, Jha also commented on the company’s patent portfolio in the wake of investor Carl Icahn suggesting the company consider selling off some of its patents. Noting the company has more than 17,000 patents granted and over 7,000 patents pending, Jha said the company is always reviewing its options. With new companies entering the mobile space, he said, “our patent portfolio in increasingly important.”

Even when pressed by analysts, though, Jha didn’t offer much in the way of specifics. “We will do all that we can to create and enhance our shareholder value using all of the assets we have at our disposal,” he said.

When Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. reports its second-quarter results Thursday, all eyes will be on how the U.S. cellphone maker is handling its separation from the more stable network-technology business, which now exists as Motorola Solutions Inc. Since the Jan. 4 split, Mobility’s shares are down 26 percent while Solution’s shares are up 15 percent.

The split-up was made possible by a recovery at the cellphone unit, which came back from years of internal turmoil to sell nearly 14 million smartphones last year — largely thanks to a joint effort with Verizon Wireless and Google Inc. That three-way partnership produced the Droid lineup and captured consumers who were yearning for an iPhone-like device but couldn’t or didn’t want to switch to the Apple Inc. phone’s exclusive U.S. carrier at the time, AT&T Inc.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The phone, the second smartphone for Verizon’s 4G LTE network, will go on sale April 28 for a hefty $299, with a two-year contract. Among its features are a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and 1GHz processor.

The original Droid phone, launched in 2009, was made by Motorola. All Droid models until the Charge have been made by either Motorola or HTC.

The launch of the Droid Charge comes as Motorola and Verizon have delayed the debut of the Droid Bionic, another LTE-capable phone. It was originally slated to launch this quarter but has been pushed back until later in the summer.

The only phone currently running on Verizon’s LTE network is HTC’s Thunderbolt. On its earnings conference call earlier Thursday, Verizon said that it activated 260,000 Thunderbolts during a two-week period following its launch.

The company said on the call that it also expects to have “up to three” phones running on the LTE network by the end of the current quarter.

That is a slower start than either Android or Palm’s webOS had in their debut, NPD said. Windows Phone 7′s sales put it not only behind Android, Apple and RIM, but also behind its own, older Windows Mobile operating system. Windows Phone 7′s two percent share was roughly equal to what HP’s Palm share was for the fourth quarter.

“With its mid-quarter launch, Windows Phone 7 entered the epicenter of competition between iOS and Android at AT&T,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin said in a statement. “Both competitors offer mature feature sets and large app libraries. Microsoft has made the case for Windows Phone 7′s differentiation and improved integration. Now, the company must close the feature gap, offer more exclusive capabilities, work with partners to deliver hardware with better differentiation, and leverage its extensive experience in driving developer communities to increase its app offerings.”

Microsoft has said some two million phones running Windows Phone 7 were sold to carriers worldwide, but has offered no data on the rate at which the devices were actually leaving store shelves.

AT&T, which sells the broadest array of Windows Phone 7 models, also hasn’t given specific sales figures but said that the numbers have been growing steadily since launch. LG, one of the phone makers that built Windows 7 models, indicated its sales were less than it had hoped.

Microsoft downplayed the meaningfulness of early sales figures.

“Sales are an important measure of success, but for a new platform customer satisfaction and active developer investment can be even more important leading indicators of long-term success,” a representative said in a statement, reiterating comments that the company made last week noting high customer satisfaction numbers and a growing base of applications. “These early signs of satisfaction from customers and developers are reason to be bullish about the foundation for long-term success for Windows Phone 7.”

Overall, NPD said that Android grew its share nine points during the quarter, grabbing 53 percent of the consumer market, while Apple iPhones accounted for 19 percent of the market, down four percentage points. RIM also had a 19 percent share, a drop of two percentage points.

The five top-selling handsets included three Android models and two versions of the iPhone–the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 4 was the top-selling device, followed by the Motorola Droid X and HTC Evo 4G. The iPhone 3GS was the fourth-best-selling model, followed by the Motorola Droid 2. Motorola has already said it expects to take a hit this quarter, as its top-selling devices are on Verizon, which is now getting an iPhone of its own.

So a penny better on earnings-per-share and in-line on revenue. Not bad, but not good enough, either. Certainly not good enough to outweigh smartphone shipments that fell a bit short of expectations–4.9 million to the 5.2 million the Street had been looking for–and a disappointing outlook. Looking ahead to the first quarter, the company sees a net loss per share of $0.09 to $0.21 compared to the $0.12-$0.13 loss predicted by analysts. Why the disparity? The unexpected costs of independence, perhaps. And, undoubtedly, the debut of the iPhone on Verizon with which its handsets will soon be competing. Remember, Verizon’s original motivation for embracing Android handsets like those Motorola Mobility creates was to offer its subscribers an iPhone-equivalent. Now that it’s able to offer them the real thing, some are certain to opt for it over competing Android devices.

At $33.15 shares of Motororola Mobility are down 4.82 percent as I write this.

“Our checks with industry sources indicate that Verizon will put heavy promotion behind the iPhone, likely ahead of its other platforms including Android,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu says.

I’d say that’s a safe bet, given the amount of effort that Verizon put into the deal and the obviously high expectations for it. Indeed, as Wu himself notes, the carrier is already touting the iPhone 4 as a flagship product on its Web site. And it’s given it a snappy little tagline that’s well suited for an (inevitable) ad campaign: “The phone that changed everything. Coming to America’s most reliable network.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Verizon iPhone Will “Suck The Wind Out of Android’s Growth”
• Analysts Go Out on Limb, Predict Verizon iPhone Will Be Big for Apple
• AT&T: Verizon iPhone? Whatever.
• Verizon iPhone: What, AT&T Worry?
• Why Verizon’s iPhone Won’t Be So Bad for RIM
• How Might the Verizon iPhone Differ From the iPhone 4 (Besides Being Able to Make Calls)?
• Tired: Speculating About Verizon iPhone. Wired: Speculating About Verizon iPhone Sales.
• Verizon iPhone to Debut With Unlimited Data Plan
• Apple CEO Likely to Appear at Verizon iPhone Event
• Verizon Event Set for Tuesday–iPhone Time

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

The Motorola Xoom packs a 16-by-10 aspect ratio, a dual-core processor, 1080p playback and Flash support, and will run on Verizon’s network. Initially, the tablet will run on Verizon’s 3G network, but Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said the Xoom that goes on sale in the first quarter of this year will be upgradeable to 4G by the end of the second quarter.

“The software is not completely done,” Jha said, adding that the hardware isn’t either.

Google Android boss Andy Rubin had briefly showed a prototype Motorola tablet at last month’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference and said that Honeycomb was being designed expressly with tablets in mind.

The Xoom, Wi-Fi Samsung Tab and G-Slate are in addition to the Toshiba, Asus and Vizio tablets announced earlier in the week.

Nearly all of these tablets are running some flavor of Android, though a handful of Windows 7 tablets are also being shown in Las Vegas.

However, the scene in Vegas offers a somewhat skewed view of the tablet market. Outside Sin City, the iPad is still the dominant player, while a number of tablet competitors expected soon have opted not to launch here. HP is having an event next month to focus on future webOS devices, while Research In Motion has said it will launch its PlayBook before the end of March.

Motorola also used some of its afternoon event to show off the Motorola Atrix 4G, a smartphone introduced at an AT&T event earlier in the day. It packs a fingerprint reader, a dual-core 1GHz processor, and the ability to dock to an 11-inch screen and keyboard to act as a mini-laptop, with eight hours of battery life.

When docked, the phone can power a full desktop version of Mozilla, including full Flash support, allowing for a PC-like experience all powered by the smartphone. AT&T Senior Vice President Jeff Bradley said it is too soon to say how much the device will cost, but promised the price will be competitive. Although AT&T has the U.S. exclusive on the Atrix, Motorola said it will be offered through Bell Canada and Orange UK.

In addition to the Atrix and Tablet, Motorola announced its first phone to run on faster LTE networks–the dual-core Droid Bionic, which is slated to arrive early in the second quarter on Verizon Wireless. Motorola also introduced the Cliq 2, an update to Motorola’s first Motoblur phone for T-Mobile.

Update 5:45 pm PT: As for timing, I confirmed that the Motorola Xoom is indeed the “lead device” for Honeycomb and will be the first on the market when it ships later this quarter. The LG model is slated to ship “in the coming months,” and other Honeycomb tablets will follow.

Google isn’t sharing a lot of new details on Honeycomb, but Rubin did make a short blog post and upload this YouTube video, which touts Google Talk video chatting, a specially designed YouTube App and access to Google Books.

“Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive,” Rubin said in the blog post. “We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.”

.

Palm: Stay the cool kid at Hewlett-Packard, so it’ll keep giving us lots of toys and not merge the smartphone acquisition into the PC unit. Release that tablet we’ve been working on and get our phones out of the clearance section of the stores. Remember to include “and printers” on all our slides when asking for more money.

Microsoft: We were going to copy and paste from last year’s resolutions, but it turns out we can’t copy and paste yet. So, that’s resolution No. 1. But since we’re going to solve that in January, we’ll move on to some other ambitions. Let’s see, open up to more developers, convince developers we’re worth their time, add features, support more networks.

Hmm. Last year’s “Try not to suck so much” is starting to seem easy by comparison.

Research in Motion: Learn some new ways of saying “Everything is great,” so it doesn’t get too repetitive in public speeches. Meanwhile, keep shaking things up behind the scenes. Buy a few more companies. Get some apps for that PlayBook. Find some more really big countries that the other people are ignoring and sell them a boatload of BlackBerrys.

Samsung: Keep going with this whole Galaxy thing–it worked to the tune of about 10 million phones this year. Try to convince Google phone king Andy Rubin to get a tattoo that reads “Galaxy S smartphone.” Remind the carriers that they really did agree to market all our phones that way.

HTC: Good thing we went Android a couple years back, but now we’re kind of glad we didn’t give up on Microsoft. Now, we have to figure out how to convince them to let us customize Windows Phone 7.

Motorola: Keep telling Verizon and Google that they’ve hurt our feelings and see what other perks we can get via guilt. Hey, it worked well with that tablet, didn’t it?

Apple: We are already perfect, so where do you go from there? Follow a magical 2010 with an even more magical 2011. How’s that?

What else? Let’s see. Okay, here’s one: Keep trashing smaller tablets until the day we come out with one.

Google: Release six or seven more versions of Android. Rename “Nexus Tablet You Should Have Made” to something less insulting to the hardware makers. Travel to foreign countries and discover more desserts, because we’re running out of code names for the next version of the tasty mobile operating system.

Nokia: Ship something to the U.S. so they’ll stop making fun of us and realize that we actually do make smartphones. Speaking of shipping, we really should ship some of these products we’ve been talking about for years. Most people are starting to think “Meego” is just a code word we use when we don’t know what to say.

Verizon: Stay on Steve Jobs’s good side. Print iPhone posters on the back of all those Droid billboards from last year. Release a whole bunch of LTE phones, so that the iPhone shelf isn’t lonely in the stores.

AT&T: Work on next-generation networks using that spectrum we picked up from Qualcomm. Talk about how we really love the other non-iPhone smartphones and actually mean it this year, because we have to.

T-Mobile: Keep talking about how we can just keep making the current network faster, while trying to convince the feds to let us have some more spectrum. Make more of those commercials making fun of AT&T. They are funny and it’s so much easier than having to deal with Catherine Zeta-Jones. And lots of Android, along with some tablets too.

Sprint: Find a way to remind people that, while we still don’t have an iPhone, we do have a next-generation network up and running, complete with phones and data devices. Add a 4G tablet or two to the mix. (Hey, Jon Rubinstein, is that PalmPad ready yet?)

That, after all, is what it was built for.

But a looming challenge is how to tailor both the phones and their marketing to make them more appealing to all those mainstream users who are buying their first smartphone.

For Sprint, one step in this process has been the creation of Sprint ID–a system that lets phone buyers customize their device with one or more themed “packs,” which install a series of themes, widgets and applications with a single click.

Sprint launched the effort back at the CTIA show in October, but is now getting up to speed by both adding more devices compatible with Sprint ID and by lining up some brand-name content. This week, Sprint announced a new MTV-themed pack that combines news from MTV, music from Pandora and an app that helps highlight new artists based on social networking trends.

There’s clearly some room here for device makers and carriers. Even Google’s Andy Rubin, the father of Android, concedes that thus far Android has been best suited for techies.

“I would probably characterize Android as it is today as an early adopters’ platform,” Rubin said at last week’s D: Dive Into Mobile. “It’s for the tech enthusiast and people who are married to the tech enthusiast.”

That is quickly changing, though, with Android making up a greater and greater percentage of phone sales at Sprint and elsewhere.

“You are moving to the mass majority,” said David Owens, Sprint’s vice president of consumer marketing. “That’s not a group of people that are going to go in and customize their device.”

Sprint ID allows them to pick an interest and get all kinds of related content. From there, users can uninstall components or add other applications, but Owens said it gives users a starting point and Sprint a way to stand out from the competition.

Initially, Sprint ID packs were offered as options on two Android models, and more recently Sprint added the lower-end Optimus S to the mix. Owens said those who have one of the three phones have downloaded, on average, two of the themed packs. Sprint plans to eventually offer Sprint ID on all its Android devices.

Sprint ID opens the door to some alternative revenue possibilities for advertising or sales of premium content, but currently all the packs are free, and Sprint is not banking on much in the way of additional bucks for now.

So far, it has about 15 of the different packs, each geared to specific topics and identities, ranging from the MTV pack, to one for golf enthusiasts to several targeted specifically to Latinos. (Latino MTV watchers who love to play 18 holes needn’t worry–users can install up to six different packs and switch among them.)

What has been lacking until now is much in the way of brand power, though Owens said Sprint hopes to change this with MTV and other packs in the pipeline. He wouldn’t give any hints, but said there should be more announcements by CES.

According to the report, from Asymco, AT&T saw iPhone sales grow from 2.7 million devices in the first quarter to 5.3 million in the third quarter. Verizon, meanwhile, saw total smartphone shipments grow from 2.7 million units to 3.3 millon units during that same period.

In particular, the report shows Verizon growth hitting a wall in August with sales of all its major smartphones dropping from August through October. Asymco, which based its report on figures from an ITG Investment Research report as well as results from AT&T, has some very pretty charts of all this (well, pretty unless you are Verizon).

A Verizon Wireless spokesman declined comment, while AT&T was predictably happy about the report. “This report validates AT&T’s approach, which is to offer customers maximum choice in handsets, operating systems and much more,” an AT&T representative told Mobilized.

Not to quibble, but the numbers seem to speak more to the power of the iPhone against all the choices in the world.

All of this is interesting, but may prove somewhat moot for Verizon once it gets the iPhone, a development widely expected to happen early next year.

The real lesson here seems to be for the smartphone makers other than Apple, particularly those that have been heavily promoted by Verizon. (Can you hear me now, Motorola?)

Motorola has already said it expects to take a hit in the first quarter based on expected developments at Verizon. But other Android-based makers could also take a hit as the arrival of the iPhone at Verizon takes away one of the top reasons people buy a non-Apple phone–they don’t want to go with AT&T.

That said, Google has been crowing about the growth of Android, with exec Andy Rubin tweeting last week that the activations of Android-based phones now top 300,000 per day.

Update, 3:30 pm PT: Asymco clarified that the ultimate numbers used in the charts and the report were its own, based on publicly reported numbers from AT&T as well as information from an ITG Investment Research report on Verizon. Also, the company said the total number of iPhones for the third quarter should have been 5.3 million, not the figure originally listed in its report.

The January 2011 issue ranking cellphones and services carries this headline on the cover: “Best and worst providers (Sorry AT&T).”

I’m going to try to pick up a copy this morning and will then update, but here are the highlights, according to the Houston Chronicle. AT&T got the magazine’s full black dot rating (that’s as low as it gets) in almost every nationwide category, while Verizon topped the rankings.

AT&T sent out the following statement in response to the rankings: “We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide. And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent–the equivalent of just one call in a thousand–of the industry leader.”

On the device side, the iPhone (the same one that the magazine once recommended against buying) tops the list of phones available at AT&T, the Droid X and Samsung Fascinate tied for best Verizon option and Samsung’s Epic and Vibrant top the options at Sprint and T-Mobile, respectively.

The engine for that spike in sales? Samsung’s Galaxy S phones, which the company distributes through six U.S. carriers, among them AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Samsung says it has now shipped three million Galaxy S smartphones since the line’s mid-July launch.

And how did other Android vendors fare in Gartner’s rankings? Motorola placed second, HTC came in a close third and LG a very distant fourth.

U.S. RANKINGS: ANDROID

1. Samsung
2. Motorola
3. HTC
4. LG

Seems Motorola’s alliance with Verizon is finally beginning to cost it a bit of market share.

“Motorola, by launching its key Android devices on Verizon Wireless, was able to gain significant market share in the U.S. but is now in a difficult position as their Android business is too reliant on Verizon Wireless with roughly 40-50% of their worldwide Android sales coming from Verizon,” Gartner analyst Hugues De La Vergne told me. “With a rumored iPhone coming to Verizon in Q1, Motorola is the hardware vendor that has the most to lose.”

Speaking at an investor conference on Wednesday, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha made his best case for the company and its opportunities in both smartphones and tablets. Motorola also plans to have 4G phones in the market early next year, Jha said, without giving specifics. But he also acknowledged the company is headed for some serious turbulence.

The first quarter is normally down from the prior quarter, but this year’s first quarter is shaping up to be a lot worse, with the cellphone unit expected to post a loss.

“We have an additional challenge potentially with Verizon,” Jha said, speaking in code so as not to use the iWord. “There is a competitive dynamic developing.”

Mobilized isn’t afraid to say the phone that must not be named. He’s talking about a Verizon iPhone.

Jha talked a lot about the company’s efforts to diversify–selling more phones to carriers other than Verizon, increasing sales in Latin America and China, and adding tablets. Jha said the company will sell both 7-inch and 10-inch tablets.

However, clearly not everyone was impressed. As noted by Barron’s, Nomura Securities launched coverage of Motorola stock on Thursday with a “reduce” rating, saying that a CDMA iPhone could ultimately push Motorola into the mid-tier of the smartphone battle, where it will face more competition from Asian makers, such as Samsung.

And the timing could hardly be worse for Motorola, which is spinning off the cellphone unit, a process that is slated to be completed on Jan. 4.

Longer-term, Motorola faces the challenge of using an operating system, Android, that is used widely in the industry, while spending more than rivals on research and other development costs.

One conference attendee suggested HTC’s research costs are a third of what Motorola spends. Jha said that there is a difference in the two companies’ cost structures, but rejected the idea that it was that pronounced.

“I think we are investing more in software differentiation,” he said. “I think we will make that investment matter.”

There’s also the fact that the phone businesss is so hit driven. That’s something the company learned on the positive side with the RAZR way back when, and on the negative side in the drought that followed the release of that slim flip phone.

Although the competition among Android devices is fierce, Jha said he doesn’t regret the company’s bet back in 2008 to focus so much of its resources on that operating system.

“There are obviously tradeoffs in every decision,” Jha said. “But on balance it’s been a very, very good decision for us.”

Jha said he knows that in order for Motorola to produce the kind of profit margins it wants long-term, it will have to be able to differentiate its software. Hardware differentiation, he said, gives only a six-month advantage versus doing something unique in software.

“I don’t think I can get to a gorilla position from where I am in one easy sweep, but I think it is possible to create differentiation in this business,” Jha said.

Unsurprisingly, Symbian is the leading mobile OS worldwide. It’s dominant in some 100 countries and accounts for more that half of all mobile Web usage in 75 of them. It essentially owns the Mideast and most of the developing world, thanks to those regions’ affinity for Nokia’s cheap mobile phones.

Apple’s iOS is the second most used mobile OS worldwide, with its iPhone and iPod touch claiming the most mobile Web traffic in 30 countries. In 21 of them, those devices accounted for more than half of all mobile Web traffic. IOS appears most popular in Canada, Cuba (!), Switzerland and Australia, where it claims over 70 percent of all mobile Web traffic. Interestingly, it’s quite a bit less popular in the United States, where it garnered a little over 35 percent.

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry OS leads four countries, with one–the Dominican Republic–where OS usage is over 50 percent. Shockingly, in its home country of Canada, it accounts for a paltry 3.6 percent of mobile Web traffic.

And Android?

It leads just one country, South Korea, with a 78.3 percent share of all mobile Web traffic. Presumably, that’s thanks to Samsung, which is based in the country and sells a number of Android phones. So while Android is surging ahead, thanks to Google’s strategy of flooding the market with multiple handsets on multiple carriers at a wide range of price points, there’s still a hell of a lot of market share that it hasn’t even come close to touching.

[Image credit: Chart and data courtesy Royal Pingdom]

The consumer research group says that Google’s software was installed on 44 percent of mobile handsets sold in Q3, up 11 points since Q2. While that data may rile up Apple fans, Android’s gain seems to be primarily fueled by BlackBerry’s loss: Research in Motion lost six points in the last quarter, falling to 22 percent, while Apple’s iOS moved up one point, to 23 percent.

The year-over-year data is more dramatic: It shows BlackBerry’s market share dropping dramatically, and Apple’s less so.

The consolation prize for Apple and RIM is that they had the most-popular individual phone models in the quarter: NPD says the iPhone 4 and the Curve 8500 took the number one and two spots, respectively.

So how did Android gain share? Because it’s on so many other new phones. Canned quote from NPD’s Ross Rubin: “The HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, and other new high-end Android devices have been gaining momentum at carriers that traditionally have been strong RIM distributors, and the recent introduction of the BlackBerry Torch has done little to stem the tide.”

Posting third-quarter financials this morning, the company reported growth in sales and profit for the period on strong demand for its Android smartphones. Earnings were $109 million, or 5 cents per share, on revenue of $5.8 billion. On an adjusted basis, they were 17 cents per share compared with the Street’s expectation of 11 cents.

In the quarter, Motorola shipped 3.8 million smartphones–enough for its Mobile Devices division to show an operating profit for the first time in over three and a half years. Great news for Motorola, which plans to divide itself into two independent companies early next year–one to handle its mobile devices and home businesses, and the other to handle enterprise mobility.

UPDATE: Well, that’s what I get for living in the Apple ecosystem and never having the opportunity to go bargain-hunting for a phone. As one of my esteemed colleagues so graciously points out in the comments, lots of newer phones are steeply discounted on Amazon, some (like the Torch) as soon as the day of release. So the deals offered on the Torch can’t really be read as an indicator of demand, one way or the other. Chastened, I will humbly await additional data before speculating further on its success.

…………………

Launched last Thursday, Research in Motion’s new BlackBerry Torch is already being sold at a discount–and significant one, too. First offered at $199.99 with a two-year contract, you can find the Torch for $99.99 by Amazon and Wirefly, as well (AT&T continues to offer it for the original price).

This seems an ominous sign. The Torch may well be the best BlackBerry yet, as RIM (RIMM) claims, but halving its price so early suggests that Droid- and iPhone-addled consumers may not really care. That said, Torch sales are more likely to be driven by upgrades from existing BlackBerry users than by converts. So RIM is selling to its base here, which isn’t a bad thing given its size (a near-50 percent share of the U.S. market).

Said Gleacher and Co. analyst Mark McKechnie, “We had not expected a consumer phenomenon à la the iPhone 4 or MOT’s Droid X as we view the Torch as largely an upgrade for loyal BlackBerry road warriors. While hard to quantify, early feedback is that most buyers are ‘ugpraders’ — i.e. existing BlackBerry users replacing older units. Thus the sales will add to the overall device sales but not the subscriber additions.”