Microsoft plays the heavy in the smartphone wars

If Apple (AAPL) is the elephant in the room this week in Barcelona, dominating the cellphone industry's annual showcase without having to show up (see here), Microsoft (MSFT) is the 800 pound gorilla -- throwing its weight around and scaring all manufacturers.

That's the conclusion of Daniel Eran Dilger in a long Roughly Drafted post entitled "Did Microsoft Kill Android at Mobile World Congress 2009?"

"How does one sell an aging mobile MORE

Report: Mac sales off 6% in January; iPod off 14%

January was a slow month for Apple (AAPL) -- even slower than Wall Street thought it was going to be.

Mac unit sales were down 6% compared with last January, according to NPD data released Tuesday. iPod sales fared even worse, down 14% year to year.

The Street was expecting Mac sales to be off by only 4% and iPod sales off 11%, according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.

In a report to MORE

Steve Jobs as Eustace Tilley

The cover of the inaugural issue of the New Yorker, published Feb. 17, 1925, featured a dandy peering through a monocle at a butterfly. Eustace Tilley, as the character was called, became the New Yorker's official mascot and has appeared ever since on its anniversary issue.

Since 1994, the magazine has invited contributing artists to reinterpret Tilley in a style appropriate for the times. In 2008, Colombian graphic artist Camilo Ramirez MORE

Now everybody has an App Store

It's Mobile World Congress week in Barcelona, where the city's famous pickpockets have dozens of new gadgets to choose from, and the shadow of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone once again looms large.

Last year, rival cellphone manufacturers used the event to announce their own touchscreen smartphones.

This year, what's getting the love is the iTunes App Store, with its 20,000-plus applications and half a billion downloads.

Among the announcements making headlines this week:

Nokia's MORE

Tracking the iPhone's bubble of hype

Think of the jagged light blue line in the fever chart at right as the bubble of hype that keeps Apple's (AAPL) iPhone floating above of its competitors.

What you're looking at is a snapshot of a Google Trends chart comparing the number of times the word  "iPhone" appears in a Google search request with the words "Palm" (PALM), Research in Motion's (RIMM) "BlackBerry," Microsoft's (MSFT) "Windows Mobile" and Google's (GOOG) MORE

An Apple Store for Brooklyn?

New Yorkers know better, especially these days, than to expect any sympathy from the rest of the country -- even though the city, with three Apple Stores for a population of more than 8 million, is conspicuously underserved by the company's retail outlets. (San Francisco's three stores, by contrast, serve a population of fewer than 800,000.)

But what about Brooklyn? The most populous of the five boroughs (pop. 2.5 million) would MORE

Analyst: iPhone nano "may not see light of day"

Apple has three new iPhone models in a "fairly advanced" state of development, according to Kaufman Bros.' Shaw Wu, including one with a 2.8-inch screen (the screen on the current iPhone measures 3.5-inches diagonally).

All three devices are just waiting for a green light from Apple (AAPL), according to Wu's sources among the company's Asian suppliers, and could be readied for launch in either the June or September quarter.

But in a MORE

New Chinese iPhone talks target May 17 -- UPDATE

Has Apple switched horses in China?

That's the thrust of a pair of news reports out of Beijing this week that suggest a deal to carry the iPhone in China could be reached as early as May 17.

The first report, published Monday by Interfax-China, offered a recap of the sticking points that seem to have scuttled negotiations between Apple (AAPL), which is desperately seeking a partner in the world's largest MORE

iPhone now represents 51% of U.S. smartphone traffic -- report

This comes from one Web metric among many, so take it with a grain of salt.

But according to AdMob, one of the largest mobile Web ad networks, Apple's (AAPL) handsets now dominate mobile Web traffic in almost every category.

According to AdMob's analysis of the billions of ad requests it saw in January:

The iPhone OS now represents 51% of U.S. smartphone traffic, leaving RIM's (RIMM) BlackBerry (19%) and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows MORE

CIOs get sexy

There was a time when the geeks who keep a company's tech systems running could get by without knowing the finer details of corporate strategy. You called the chief information officer when you needed a server upgrade, not a strategic plan.

Well, those days are over.

This downturn could mean the end of the sequestered CIO -- that rumpled executive who, like Scotty on Star Trek, has limited social skills and usually MORE