Spearheading the change are tech buyers such as Vanguard Health Systems Inc., a Nashville, Tenn., health-care company that has a $100 million-plus annual tech budget. In the past, Vanguard Health used to stick with just a few tech vendors such as Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc.

But more recently, Scott Blanchette, Vanguard’s chief information officer, chose a three-year-old start-up instead of one of its incumbents for software to help spot trends in clinical data. The software from the start-up, Explorys Inc., costs less and could get up and running faster, he said.

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The move could have major implications for a number of vendors that live on iTunes but route customers through their own billing systems. By circumventing Apple’s payment platform, those vendors avoid having to share 30% of sales with Apple.

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The first signs of trouble came in the form of a cancellation of a media briefing scheduled by Hewlett-Packard for Feb. 15 in New York concerning a new batch of HP business notebooks. I’m now told the event will be rescheduled. (Update: See HP’s statement below.)

Meanwhile, Dell told Bloomberg News that four of its PCs are affected, all of them in the higher end of the lineup: XPS and Alienware, both gaming-oriented machines, and the Vostro line, aimed at businesses.

Update: Dell spokeswoman Elizabeth Shine just sent a statement.

“Dell and Intel are in communication regarding the design issue in the recently released Intel 6 Series support chip set, code-name Cougar Point. This affects four currently-available Dell products, the XPS 8300, the Vostro 460, the Alienware M17x R.3 and the Alienware Aurora R.3 as well as several other planned products including XPS 17 with 3D.

For customers impacted by this issue, Dell offers a couple of solutions. Customers experiencing issues will be supported under the warranty and service terms. Once we have new chip sets from Intel in early April, we will provide a motherboard replacement that corrects the design issue at no cost to our customers. Replacements will be provided at the customers’ location and convenience via authorized Dell service providers. Affected customers may also take advantage of the applicable return policy, which may vary by region.

We will provide further details as they become available.”

What’s not clear yet is whether any shipments at Apple will be affected. As usual, Apple’s product plans are shrouded in the mists of corporate secrecy. The company declined to give a statement, citing a policy of not commenting on future products. But if history is any judge, it’s about time for Apple to update the MacBook Pro. The last update, as the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide helpfully reminds us, was on April 13, 2010, or nearly 300 days ago. The average number of days between updates is closer to 200. Though even if Apple is running later than it would like to on introducing certain Macs, it would probably never admit it.

Intel, for its part, is now starting to help people who recently bought PCs to figure out if they’re affected by the problem. A page on its support Web site walks users through the process of determining whether they have the chipset in question and, if they do, directs them to contact the “place of purchase” or an Intel field sales rep.

Update 2:I just received a statement from HP spokeswoman Marlene Somsak on the issue:

“HP is working with Intel and our distribution partners to address this industrywide issue. The issue relates to only a small fraction of HP PCs sold or ordered since on or about January 9 2011 when the Intel technology became available commercially. HP and Intel are working together to minimize any inconvenience to customers.

For HP, the issue is primarily limited to certain consumer notebooks and certain consumer desktops. One commercial desktop PC model marketed to small business customers in the Europe-Middle East-Africa region is affected. No other commercial desktop products currently shipping are affected. No HP commercial notebooks, ProLiant servers or workstations are affected.

To deliver a high-quality experience to our customers, on January 31 2011 HP stopped manufacturing products with the affected Intel technology and initiated a shipment hold on products in HP and channel inventory.

Customers can return their affected product and choose a comparable product or receive a refund. We will continue to work closely with Intel and our retail partners to address the needs of our customers.”

Pixelmator co-founder Aidas Dailide told me the company sold about 33,000 copies of the software at $29.99–a limited-time discount from its standard $59 price–to gross $1 million. And he said he had no problem paying Apple the 30 percent cut of sales it demands of App Store vendors, something critics have labeled “the Apple Toll.”

“The 30 percent cut is definitely worth it,” he said. “The increase in sales and exposure is worth much more than that. Especially in our case.” And just how much of a sales increase from the pre-App Store days did Pixelmator experience? Dailide wouldn’t say, though he did remark that “the jump in sales was dramatic.”

Which is a point worth noting, because earlier this month Pixelmator made the Mac App Store its exclusive sales channel.

“Our assumption is that Apple’s dominance will remain firmly intact in the near to mid-term, but gradually, technology improvements and component cost declines will enable the laggards to offer ‘good enough’ solutions to loosen some of Apple’s grip,” Moskowitz says. “Of note, we expect a host of competitive tablets in 2H 2011, following the release of Android 3.0 this coming spring. The upgraded Android operating system should gradually improve the competitiveness relative to Apple’s iOS. Our conversations with industry contacts indicate that the current version of Android does not provide a computing rich experience, which is a requisite of tablets.”

But a gradual improvement in the competitiveness of Android tablets isn’t nearly enough to slow the iPad juggernaut. Presumably, a lot of those first-generation Android 3.0 tablets will arrive at market about the same time as the second generation of the iPad. That alone should allow Apple to maintain a comfortable lead, but the company has iOS and the iTunes content ecosystem working in its favor as well.

“With tablets, we view form factor, operating system robustness, and content ubiquity as critical demand enablers, and here, we expect Apple to dominate,” Moskowitz concludes. “Similar to the iPhone, the iPad reflects Apple’s ability to introduce unrivaled technology experiences for the customer. The key factor driving the separation from other tablet vendors stands to be Apple’s content ecosystem. With tablets, we think that offering a trove of applications, as is industry practice in smartphones, will not be enough. The ability of the user to access content, such as movies and TV shows, is increasingly important for tablet users. This dynamic is where Apple has fought hard to secure access to content, and we think it will take time for other vendors to establish a similar content ecosystem.”

Consider this: In 2009, HTC, Samsung and LG accounted for 67 percent of Windows Mobile shipments. In the third quarter of 2010, those same companies accounted for 44 percent of Android handset shipments. Motorola and Sony Ericsson, also longtime Windows Mobile licensees, accounted for an additional 30 percent.

With Android commanding that kind of OEM attention, Microsoft is going to have to work harder than ever to rewrite the weak mobile story it’s written for itself over the past few years.

“To ensure Window Phone 7’s success, Microsoft must sign up virtually all of the name brand smartphone vendors who deserted Windows Mobile for Android when Microsoft failed to modernize the operating system for three years,” says Needham analyst Charlie Wolf. “Microsoft has signed up three of them and has two to go. Google would argue that it has the upper hand in this tussle because it licenses Android for free while Microsoft charges a licensing fee (albeit a small one compared to its PC licensing fees). But Microsoft simply has more at stake.”

And it knows it. Which is why it’s putting so many marketing dollars into Windows Phone 7.

Says Wolf, “We suspect the company will devote a material portion of [its marketing budget] to buy the support of the leading smartphone manufacturers.”

Not for much longer, it seems. The company is also closing its online music store at the end of the year. And I’m told that it has essentially abandoned efforts to launch a new, legal music service that it had spent much of the past year building.

A sign on the Web retailer’s homepage tells customers that it’s no longer accepting new payments, and the company has told vendors via email that the store will shutter on Dec. 31. (You can see a copy of the note at the bottom of this post.)

LimeWire hasn’t responded to my request for comment. And it’s not clear why the company is closing up the shop, because in this case, LimeWire shouldn’t be dealing with any legal issues. LimeWire operated the store the same way that Apple’s iTunes does–it took product that music labels (not the big ones, but small independents) wanted to sell and delivered it to customers.

Meanwhile, people familiar with the company tell me that it has also stopped pursuing plans to launch a new, legal music service that had been building throughout 2010.

As recently as October, the company had been talking up the prospects of the new service, and had invited me to see a preview of it even after the court ruling that shuttered its illegal file-sharing service. But LimeWire later rescinded the invitation, and said that its lawyers had advised it not to discuss the new service.

My hunch is that LimeWire is stripping down all of its remaining assets in advance of January court proceedings. Those are going to determine how much the company owes the major music labels that successfully sued it for copyright violations.

LimeWire had already laid off at least 30 percent of its workforce following the October court ruling.

“We see 3 immediate effects of expansion of the distribution of the iPhone at Verizon,” Bernstein Research analyst Pierre Ferragu said in a note to clients today. “A) Migration of existing iPhone users from AT&T to Verizon; B) Some migration of Android users at Verizon to the new iPhone; C) More support to Android from AT&T, as a consequence of the loss of the iPhone exclusivity.”

Worst-case scenario, Ferragu figures Motorola, HTC and RIM will lose 10-30 percent of their business to Verizon. But that loss will likely be offset by new gains at AT&T–at least for Android vendors like HTC and Motorola, for whom Ferragu predicts a 0-30 percent increase in shipments at the carrier. Says Ferragu, “If Verizon starts selling the iPhone, we believe there will not be a visible impact for HTC and a limited one for RIM. If there is a medium term impact on Motorola, we believe that the shortfall will be easily made up in the full year.”

Shipments of ‘white-box,’ or unbranded, cellphones rose sharply in emerging markets as Chinese manufacturers expanded into regions like India and Africa, taking market share from the larger cellphone vendors, Gartner said.

Unbranded phone makers’ rapid growth hit the combined market share of the world’s five largest handset vendors, which fell to 67 percent in the third quarter from 83 percent a year earlier. Overall, shipments of phones increased 35 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier to 417 million units, Gartner said.

Chinese makers, who typically build phones around chipsets from Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc., can push out simple devices at very low prices as they have low manufacturing costs and often copy older hardware designs from other vendors, Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner research vice president, said in an interview.

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[On weekends, we will be re-posting some pieces from the previous week that we wanted to call attention to again that some readers might have missed.]

Acer chairman J.T. Wang recently predicted that Apple’s share of the tablet market would decline precipitously as new rivals emerge, falling from nearly 100 percent to 20 to 30 percent.

But J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz isn’t so sure. While a number of new tablets will hit the market over the next year, inevitably claiming some market share, it’s unlikely that they’ll whittle the iPad’s down to 20 percent or even 30 percent.

They may get it down to 50 percent, though, says Moskowitz.

“The iPad’s sales momentum out of the gate has been unprecedented for a new product, and there appears to be no boundaries to the use case for the device, meaning the adoption curve could remain steep beyond the near term,” he theorizes. “We think that the iPad’s form factor, technology, and content ecosystem could help the company retain 50 percent of the tablet market next year, and anything above that number could represent a significant source of upside to our estimates.”

Which is good news for Apple (AAPL), which stands to sell a hell of a lot of iPads next year. For fiscal 2011, Moskowitz estimates iPad unit sales could hit 22.2 million, assuming Apple retains 50 percent share of a tablet market of approximately 45 to 50 million units.

One last point worth noting here. As slick as some of these rival tablets might prove to be, they’re still likely to have a hard time stealing market share from the iPad because of Apple’s broad app and content ecosystem. Says Moskowitz, “With tablets, we think that offering a trove of applications, as is industry practice in smartphones, will not be enough. The ability of the user to access content, such as movies and TV shows, is more important for tablet users, and this is where Apple has fought hard to secure access to the content. We think it will take time for other vendors to establish similar access to the content.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter rootyb]

So it’s no surprise that the company announced an open-source, royalty-free HTML5 video format based on VP8 at its I/O conference Wednesday. What is surprising is the level of industry support Google has already rounded up.

Dubbed WebM, the format uses the VP8 codec for video and Vorbis codec for audio and is offered under a pretty permissive BSD-style license that makes it quite a bit more attractive than H.264, a rival format with pretty steep licensing fees.

Google is pushing the format hard. The company has convinced Mozilla and Opera to add WebM support to their browsers (Chrome support is obviously a given) and it has begun encoding all YouTube videos 720p or larger in the format.

Google has also lined up some 40 software and hardware vendors to support WebM. Among them: Oracle (ORCL), AMD (AMD), ARM (ARM), Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Brightcove. Also on the list: Adobe (ADBE), which plans to use VP8 for Flash.

An impressive lineup of supporters, though there are three notable omissions: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC). Will those companies come around and back the standard as well? Given enough industry support for VP8 playback through HTML5, they may have to. I’ve asked them and will update here if I hear back.

UPDATE: Intel tells me it will support WebM and V8, not because it particularly favors them but because it plans to support most video formats.

“We’re supportive of multiple formats,” a company spokesman told me. “We don’t support one format to the exclusion of another format.”

UPDATE: Interesting. There’s speculation that WebM may violate some H.264 patents. “VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264,” developer Jason Garrett-Glaser concludes after an exhaustive analysis of the format. “[A] pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today’s overly litigious day and age. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. Until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be extremely cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem.”

Said Intel exec Boyd Davis: “We’ve already shipped hundreds of thousands of these (processors).” And for good reason. Built using the company’s 32-nanometer processor technology, these Xeon 5600 series chips promise to deliver greater performance and energy efficiency than their predecessors. With luck, they’ll help drive new equipment spending in enterprise, which would obviously be good for both the server and chip markets.

“Borders has continued to pay its vendors in a timely manner, has not lengthened its days to pay, and has not been contacted by a group of publishers as alleged,” the company said.

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“With Windows Mobile, we want to permit a range of hardware innovation, and yet, still have a pretty good experience end-to-end, with good applications, and we want the ability for software developers to target both a very high-end and a lower range or mid-range phone. And the ability to scale up and down, to work with multiple hardware vendors, to get a range of competition and innovation and price competition amongst the hardware guys is a big asset. It is certainly what our strategy is.”

That being the case, it’s intriguing to learn that talk of Microsoft’s (MSFT) long-rumored “Pink” phone project has started up again. In a note to clients today, Jefferies & Company analyst Katherine Egbert claims that Redmond is gearing up to launch a phone based on Windows Mobile 7.

“Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone sometime in the next two months,” Egbert writes. “We expect the new phone to debut soon, at either the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.”

The device, “a Zune-like phone” according to Egbert–is likely the result of an OEM partnership similar to the one between Google (GOOG) and HTC that produced the Nexus One. She believes it will boast a five-megapixel camera and support 720p HD video and some music subscription/purchasing scheme.

Beyond that, Egbert is at a loss. “We don’t have any information about the cost of the Pink phone, nor do we know what service providers might be partnered with Microsoft,” she explains.

“Revenue from the phone is also very unlikely to be meaningful for many years,” the analyst adds. “However, the new phone might explain why Microsoft has allowed WinMo to dwindle to <10% mobile OS market share. Pink would be the 'third screen' (after Windows and Xbox) and final component in Microsoft's '3 screens and a cloud' strategy."

The Apple (AAPL) tablet, an Internet-connected, touch-screen device, has dominated the tech blogosphere in recent weeks, even though it hasn’t been formally announced by the secretive company. The Journal reported that Apple is in talks with TV networks for a related subscription service, and outlets have also discussed the possible component makers that will work with Apple.

Apple watchers expect the company–maybe even Steve Jobs, who has been closely involved with the tablet’s development–to unveil the tablet in three weeks (Jan. 27, according to All Things D), and while Apple won’t be at CES, you can bet that attendees and exhibitors will be talking about it.

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“Larry Ellison: We’re a big fan of open source–in fact, we’ve had the major transaction engine to MySQL–it’s something Oracle bought years ago and has invested in it to a higher level than it was invested in before. We believe in open source, we’re a huge supporter of Linux. MySQL and Oracle do not compete–at all….There’s a long list of database machines and database software we compete against–we never compete against MySQL. They’re both called databases, they address very different markets–furthermore, it’s open source.

Ed Zander: If they ask you to spin it off, will you?

LE: No.

EZ: If they told you to spin it off, would you?

LE: No. We’re not gonna spin it off. The U.S. government cleared this, we think the Europeans are gonna clear this, and we are not going to spin anything off.”

– Excerpt from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s September Churchill Club interview with former Sun CEO Ed Zander

Looks like Oracle has managed to ease European regulators’ antitrust concerns over its $7 billion acquisition of Sun–perhaps even enough for them to approve the thing.

This morning, Oracle (ORCL) and the European Commission both said they have had “constructive discussions” about the company’s plans for Sun (JAVA) and more specifically, its open-source MySQL database software.

Driving those discussions: A 10-point list of commitments from Oracle intended to ensure that MySQL will remain a competitive force in the database market. In the list, Oracle spells out plans for the database software, promising to boost spending on research and development, refrain from seeking commercial licenses from makers of MySQL storage engines and to establish a customer advisory board of MySQL users.

These concessions went over well with the EC, which is clearly warming to the idea of a Sun-Oracle union. “Today’s announcement by Oracle of a series of undertakings to customers, developers and users of MySQL is an important new element to be taken into account in the ongoing proceedings,” said the EC in its statement.

“In particular,” the EC continued, “Oracle’s binding contractual undertakings to storage engine vendors regarding copyright non-assertion and the extension over a period of up to 5 years of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses are significant new facts.”

European Union regulators have until late January to make their decision.

Nope. Turns out that 2009 PC shipments, which were once thought to be headed for certain disaster, aren’t going to decline at all. They’re going to grow.

By 2.8 percent.

Seems that rising consumer demand for netbooks is boosting unit sales to better-than-expected levels. That said, the market value of those sales is still projected to decline.

“Blame this year’s drop in market value on the unprecedented declines in PC average selling prices (ASPs) we’ve seen this year,” said Gartner (IT) research director George Shiffler. “The rapid decline in PC ASPs reflects a marked shift towards lower price points as customers have looked for ‘good enough’ PCs at the cheapest price, and vendors have tried to spur market growth by catering to ever-lower price points. We expect PC ASP declines to slow as the market recovers, but given the market’s competitive dynamic, we don’t see PC ASPs rising any time soon. As a result, growth in the market value of shipments will significantly lag shipment growth next year and beyond.”

One last point worth noting here. Despite Microsoft’s (MSFT) claims that sales of Windows 7 have been “fantastic,” Gartner says the operating system isn’t likely to have much impact on holiday PC sales. “We just don’t see consumers buying new PCs solely because of Windows 7,” said Shiffler. “We are expecting a modest bump in fourth-quarter consumer demand as vendors promote new Windows 7-based PCs, but the attraction will be the new PCs, not Windows 7.”

According to Shiffler, “The more critical question is, ‘When will businesses make their move to Windows 7, and what will they do about replacements in the interim?’ We don’t see businesses mainstreaming Windows 7 much before the end of 2010. We think many businesses will try to shift replacements to the back end of next year so as to sync their adoption of Windows 7 with their PC refresh. That will put a damper on early 2010 shipments.”

At $12.34, Palm (PALM) is up well over seven percent as I write this, a nice gain that more than offset the four percent drop the company’s shares suffered last week. Clearly, the market is expecting a lot of the Pixi, and according to some analysts, it may get it. In a note to clients Friday, RBC analysts said they “expect positive consumer reception and healthy sell-through,” for the Pixi.

But not everyone agrees with RBC’s cheery assessment. Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Northeast Securities, has a much dimmer view of Palm’s prospects in the months ahead. He says his sell-through checks show a “substantial decline” in recent Pre sales.

“As a fading brand, carriers are likely to see better returns on their promotional and advertising dollars with other vendors,” Kumar writes. “WebOS has negligible smartphone OS share, 0.2 percent per Gartner estimates, and is unlikely to attract any meaningful third-party application support. Palm has bet the farm on webOS and there is a real possibility that they may not achieve critical mass.”

Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll see in the months ahead.

Earlier this week, analysts at Citigroup (C) and CL King voiced their concerns about the company in the wake of another ugly quarter from carrier partner Sprint (S). Now Standard & Poor’s is doing so as well. In a note to investors today, analyst James Moorman whacked down his price target on the company’s shares to $10 from $12 and reiterated his “Strong Sell rating.

“We believe the upcoming holiday selling season will be very competitive for handset vendors and think Palm could see competitive pressures,” he wrote. “We believe the small price difference between the Pre handset (especially when on sale at third party vendors) and the new lower-end Pixie could limit Pixie sales and confuse consumers during the launch.”
 
Indeed. As I noted here last week the $99 price Sprint has set for the Pixi is identical to the Pre’s on Amazon (AMZN). And the Pre has a faster processor, a better screen, and Wi-Fi support as well.

Not the most desirable circumstances for heading into the holiday season.

The text in question: The passing reference to an “impending Apple slate” by New York Times (NYT) executive editor Bill Keller in an address to his staff. That’s it.

How is this considered news? Because while everyone in Appleland is positive Steve Jobs has a wonderous tablet computer up his sleeve, no one has actually seen one. But if the guy running America’s newspaper of record mentions it, then it must be true, right?

I had a different take on this: The Times, like every other big publisher, assumes Apple (AAPL) is working on a tablet and would like to figure out how to get its stuff onto the device. But I assumed that the Times, like every other big publisher, has had no contact with the famously secretive company about its plans.

That is, Keller could have said “the Apple slate or tablet or whatever that I believe the company is working on, but don’t know about firsthand.” But he whittled his thoughts down to three words–because he’s good at writing and words and stuff like that, the way you’d think the guy running America’s newspaper of record would be.

But just for kicks, I checked in with Keller yesterday to clarify: Does he actually know what Apple is up to? Or is he in the same boat as the rest of us?

His answer, delivered via a PR rep: “I ain’t sayin’.”

Okay, then!

Let’s start by noting that it’s possible that Keller is simply tweaking a reporter’s earnest query with a purposely delphic remark.

And even if Keller does know something about Apple’s plans, that doesn’t mean he knows much. Apple is famous for keeping its vendors and partners in the dark about its product plans until Steve Jobs unveils the devices onstage.

Still, if Apple has talked to Keller and the Times about its tablet in any way, that news will come as a surprise to other publishers I’ve talked to, who can’t get Apple to even wink or nudge about the device.

Earlier this month, for instance, I reported that executives at Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. couldn’t get Apple “to even acknowledge to Time Inc. executives that it plans to produce a tablet device.”

Yesterday, I talked to an executive in charge of digital efforts at another big brand-name publisher who said the same thing. “You can’t even joke with them about a tablet,” said the executive. “They get very serious and cut the conversation short.”

Has Keller or any other Times executive had a longer conversation? I pinged Keller again last night for clarification, but haven’t heard back. If I do, I’ll update here.

In the meantime, if you want to read the tea leaves yourself, they show up around the 8:30 mark in this video, first published by the Nieman Journalism Lab:

Bill Keller speaks to the digital group at The New York Times from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

“iDon’t have a real keyboard
iDon’t run simultaneous apps
iDon’t take night shots
iDon’t allow open development
iDon’t customize
iDon’t run widgets
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries
Everything iDon’t
DROID DOES”

Shown on Fox and CBS (CBS) during a pair of NFL football games Sunday afternoon, the ad clearly positions Droid as the mythical iPhone killer. And while that might seem foolhardy, perhaps even hubristic, those who’ve seen the Motorola (MOT)-designed device say it’s at the very least a worthy iPhone rival.

Says Boy Genius: “[This is] the Android device to beat, and easily the most impressive. From what we’ve been told, Google had a direct hand in the Motorola Droid. Something to the point of almost dictating every move Motorola made when designing and making the phone….the Droid, even in its non-final form, is the most impressive phone we’ve used since the iPhone. It’s positively amazing.”

A gushing endorsement of an unreleased device and as such, to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it’s hard to believe Verizon (VZ) would go all out here without good reason. And make no mistake, the company is going all out, even to the point of licensing the “Droid” trademark from Lucasfilm.

This past weekend’s TV commercial and a Droid teaser site are clearly the beginning of a major marketing push intended to position Droid as the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s better, or at least its equal. Little wonder then that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt was so upbeat about Android’s future during the search engine company’s earnings call last week.

“Android adoption is literally about to explode,” Schmidt said. “You have all the necessary conditions, you have the vendors, you have the distribution and so forth. This is a very critical period with all of everything being delivered.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”
• Perhaps by “Devices Like the Pre,” Verizon CEO Meant the iPhone?
• Analyst: AT&T Screwed Without iPhone Exclusivity
• Q: Should Apple Bring the iPhone to Verizon? A: Yes.
• Apple, Verizon and the iPhone LiTE

The year 2010, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson asserted in a report this morning, “should be the year of the shakeout in smartphones.” He believes most of the market share and carrier focus will consolidate around three vendors. His view is that two of the winners “have effectively already been chosen.” In that group he includes Research In Motion (RIMM), “already a leader with its strong market presence” with a focus on the enterprise, and Apple (AAPL), driven by the App Store, iTunes and a strong Web browser.

So who will take the third slot?

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Interestingly, HTC recently said that its 2009 revenue would decline, after earlier forecasting a 10 percent increase. The reason for the fall? Delays in product launches.

Coincidence? Tough to say. One thing’s certain, though: If the Lancaster has been delayed or ends up being scrapped, it’s bad news for HTC, which will soon face increased competition from Motorola (MOT), Sony Ericsson and other handset vendors developing phones for Google’s (GOOG) Android.

Interestingly, HTC recently said that its 2009 revenue would decline, after earlier forecasting a 10 percent increase. The reason for the fall? Delays in product launches.

Coincidence? Tough to say. One thing’s certain, though: If the Lancaster has been delayed or ends up being scrapped, it’s bad news for HTC, which will soon face increased competition from Motorola (MOT), Sony Ericsson and other handset vendors developing phones for Google’s (GOOG) Android.