The portal is mainly focusing on Windows Mobile for smartphone applications, but should also get Android applications before this year’s end. The store includes now about 3,000 applications, but another 1,000 should be added by the end of this year, as LG estimates. The service has started with 23 countries, another 10 countries being added in a few months, to include core parts of the European area.

Companies which are licensing multiple operating systems, mainly those which sell principally conventional phones, have often been left behind. On the contrary, the fastest-growing platforms for smartphones, including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, have had, without exception, application stores attached to the operating system for at least one year. This option was missing for LG, which made it either dependent on several third-party stores or simply missing them entirely. Maybe this is a reason for LG not to be present in the smartphone category top five producers.

Also reinforced by the study was the slow growth of well established manufacturers of smartphones as well as the growth of Android which is an important part of the context. The overall growth in the smartphone area was 38 percent in 2009. However, Symbian, Nokia’s preferred platform had only an 18 percent growth, which means 57 million users. Meanwhile, Apple has grown 161 percent and reached about 10 million users. Research in Motion has jumped 87 percent and has got 4.6 million users for its BlackBerry. Android has reached 2,429 percent, but had a very small share in the month of April 2009, which is the smallest share in the group, with 1.8 million users.

Windows Mobile has gained only eight percent during the past year and consequently has given away an important part of its relative share.

Apple’s situation is expected to be improved further by the launch of the iPhone 4. This would happen mostly at the expense of the Finnish company Nokia. The 600,000 pre-orders worldwide Apple has got are much higher than what was expected, while Nokia has low expectations for its spring worldwide sales. Apple’s launch sales could even be higher as in-store reservations and walk-in purchases are not included in this number.

The study has also mentioned that Symbian users, among European owners of smartphones, are the least likely to utilize their handsets for smartphone-level features. Almost all iPhone owners utilize their phones fully for applications, web and media. A net majority of Android phone owners have the same behavior.

Google’s Android platform also gained two percent in the first quarter 2010 reaching nine percent of the smartphone market. Palm-, Linux- and Symbian-based phones keep having four, three and two percent. The number of owned smartphones has continued to grow with two percent quarter-over-quarter to 23 percent.

The study reveals that iPhone owners are more proportionately male than those of Android. The iPhone has a 55/45 male/female proportion, while in the case of Android the figures are 54/46. About 40 percent of the iPhone owners are likely to be rich, as they earn over $100,000 a year. Only 28 percent of the Android owners are in the same category. Age is also a key factor, 55 percent of the Android owners being less than 34 years old, while only 47 percent for the iPhone are aged under 34. As Nielsen observes, education levels and income tend to grow with age.

Android phone owners would like to keep using the platform on their next phone in proportion of 70 percent, while the iPhone has 80 percent devoted users. Only seven percent iPhone users would switch to Android, while 14 percent of Android users would migrate to an iPhone.

The estimate, which Microsoft does not control directly, shows a reversal of the current situation for Windows Mobile. Just 3.7 million WM phones shipping in the winter could leave the company to ship less than half the number of IDC for this year. There could be even lower sales, because any rebound from the launch of Windows Phone 7 in the fall could be compensated by eventual declines, because customers could either wait for the appearance of the new OS or could decide to adopt alternatives like iPhone and Android.

Any revitalization may no be sufficient to compensate the rivals’ sales, as far as Apple, without growing as quickly, has shipped around 51.2 million iPhones since 2007, but is determined to outperform the 2011 goal of Microsoft this year. A possible CDMA version and an increased demand could lead to 40 million iPhones sold in 2010 and an expected higher number in 2011. As for Android phones, they have a shipping rate of over 100,000 a day, and, while keeping this pace, could eclipse Microsoft quickly.

Converting Flash to iPhone applications was meant to help developers who have to write applications for more than one platform. Adobe allows other parties to act in a similar manner with plugins and other developer tools that are working on its own applications. As Brimelow mentioned, Adobe’s goal is to provide professionals the necessary tools to be able to work on as many devices as possible. According to him, Adobe would not try to destroy any initiative.

Brimelow said he would boycott Apple until a change in the leadership would happen, but he admitted that Adobe is still waiting to see if Apple is actually including the mentioned restrictions.

It is not very clear how many of these restrictions are technical and how many are simply policy. Unconfirmed rumours suggest it is multitasking requirements that seem to cause problems with applications that are written with a non-native code system.

Other critics worry that Apple is fighting against simple cross-platform development that would allow programmers to port applications to platforms like Windows Mobile, Android or others with very little effort. Adobe has tried to tempt most mobile operating system designs and therefore has ported its Flash to Android, webOS and eventually Windows Phone and Symbian.

The rising Android popularity as a consequence of the successful Motorola Droid campaign helped Google mark the largest single gain in the top five competitors. All Android devices jumped from about 2.8 percent share in the summer to 7.1 percent in January. Windows Mobile, PalmOS and webOS shares were the only ones to see a decline, dropping to 15.7 percent (ranked third) and 5.7 percent (fifth place) respectively during the same period of time.

Motorola has preserved the title of the top overall cell phone manufacturer, but had a drop to 22.9 percent, although the Droid was from far its best deal. Research in Motion’s lead in smartphones was enough to make it the fastest riser in the total phone arena, but its share is only 7.8 percent. Other competitors like Samsung, LG and Nokia were largely flat.

Moves in share were not explained by analysts, but Research in Motion has certainly benefited from its continuous deals with every major carrier in North America and continued to update its smartphone ranges that include the flagship Storm2 and the low-cost Curve 8520. Apple’s gain seems to be at the expenses of Palm and Microsoft. Customers have abandoned the old PalmOS and Windows Mobile platforms in favour of the iPhones instead of switching to webOS or have to wait for Windows Phone 7.

Users are allowed to view streaming video sent from a Slingbox Solo, Pro-HD or Pro. Content can be chosen from any live channel or DVR content previously recorded. Scheduling DVR recordings for the future is also possible with this utility.

Sling Player Mobile needs a Slingbox and a smartphone equipped with a touchscreen and running Windows Mobile 6.0 or a higher version. New customers can buy the application for $30 and upgrades from version 1.6 are available for no charge.

If the rumour is true, the move would be another symbolic stroke for Microsoft, which has been losing terrain for Windows Mobile as the platform is aging and is abandoned in favour of some more modern software. Palm’s decision to leave Windows Mobile for its own long planned webOS, while other companies like Motorola, HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have decreased the use of Windows Mobile replacing it with Android or even other platforms. Motorola, for example, has completely replaced Windows Mobile at least until Windows Mobile 7 would be in place in late next year.

The first of the three, the Motorola Devour A555, has been known primarily as the Motorola Calgary. The manufacturer claims it will be the Droid’s “little brother” and is expected to be as successful as this one. The handset is waited since the beginning of this year and will probably come with Android 2.1, MOTOBLUR and a three-megapixel camera.

As for Windows Mobile, since it is known that Verizon and LG had a good cooperation, the new phone will be, of course, the LG VS750, the first LG smartphone offered through the Big Red. Previous devices were “messaging phones” and “feature phones”, but the LG VS750 will sport Windows Mobile 6.5 and GSM/CDMA for roaming.

Palm is also heading to Verizon with the Palm Pre Plus. The Palm Pre is currently exclusively selling through Sprint, but the platform seems to expand to other carriers too. The Palm Pre Plus will join Verizon powered by webOS. What the “Plus” part of the name means is not known by now but some supplementary information will be available soon.

The updates to Windows Marketplace announced last week are supposed to be transferred to this version too and include the browsing, buying applications capabilities and then transferring applications form PCs to handsets, better security and protection against piracy.