RIM

IDC: The iPhone is once again the world's No. 1 smartphone

Regained the spot that it took from Nokia in June and gave up to Samsung in September

It will come as no surprise to Apple (AAPL) watchers that the company sold 37 million iPhones last quarter. Tim Cook reported that number two weeks ago.

Getting comparable figures from Apple's competitors is a different matter, and that's where companies like IDC come in. Samsung, for example, used to report only the number of mobile MORE

With 8.7% market share, Apple has 75% of cell phone profits

Between them, Samsung and Apple are sucking up 91% of the winnings

Asymco's Horace Dediu on Friday updated his quarterly review of mobile phone profits, and the news for everybody but Apple (AAPL) just gets worse.

As the iPhone's share of the market in terms of units shipped has grown from 3% in second quarter of 2010 to 8.7% last quarter, Apple's share of the profits has swelled from 39% to 75%.

Dediu's chart of MORE

Today in Tech: Why new PlayBook software won't help RIM

Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the long weekend. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.

* Some analysts have previewed the software update for Research in Motion's PlayBook and aren't impressed. Worse, they believe the update will do little to turn the floundering tablet's sales around. (The New York Times)

* Like Netflix (NFLX), Hulu is upping the ante by offering original content like the show Battleground, MORE

Merrill Lynch calls 2012 'the year of the tablet shakeout'

Bank of America's brokerage division picks winners and losers for the year ahead

The tablet market is "still in its infancy," writes Merrill Lynch's Scott Craig in a note to clients Wednesday, with "years of solid growth ahead."

But that growth is not evenly distributed, and in his report Craig and his colleagues single out seven winners and seven losers.

The winners: (I quote)

Amazon (AMZN): We expect strong sales of the Kindle Fire (4-5mn MORE

Canaccord Genuity: Kindle Fire will take 15.3% of tablet market

Estimates the iPad's share will drop from 74% to 53.2% by the time Christmas is over

The chart above is what Canaccord Genuity's T. Michael Walkley thinks the worldwide tablet market will look like this quarter after Amazon gets through disrupting it by selling a few million Kindle Fires at or below cost.

In a note to clients issued Tuesday, he estimated that ...

Apple's (AAPL) share of units sold will drop MORE

ChangeWave poll finds 96% of users satisfied with iPhone 4S

Up from 93% with iPhone 4. What they like most: Siri. Least: Too short battery life.

Despite widely publicized reports of unexplained battery drainage, the satisfaction ratings on Apple's (AAPL) latest iPhone continue to hover in what ChangeWave research director Paul Carton calls "nosebleed territory."

In a survey of 215 new iPhone 4S owners, 77% declared themselves "very satisfied" and 19% "somewhat satisfied" with their new phones. Only 2% were "disappointed."

Given the margin MORE

ExtremeTech: Carrier IQ-gate is best reason to buy an iPhone

A cellphone eavesdropping scandal casts a shadow on Apple's competitors

Have you heard that every text message, every e-mail, every phone number, every keystroke made on a Google (GOOG) Android phone may be secretly recorded, logged and sent to your cellular provider by a tracking service called Carrier IQ?

No? That's a surprise, because it's a scandal that's been brewing for several weeks -- ever since security researcher Trevor Eckhart discovered Carrier MORE

iPhone tops BlackBerry among mobile workers in iPass survey

In a rapidly growing market, Apple's share jumped in a year from 31% to 45% 

Apple (AAPL) made significant inroads in the enterprise over the past year according a survey of 2,300 mobile workers in 1,100 enterprises conducted in September and October by iPass, a California-based provider of Wi-Fi networks.

Among the findings released Wednesday:

95% of mobile workers surveyed now have smartphones, up from 85% in 2010
The iPhone is now the top smartphone MORE

Today in Tech: Amazon launches e-book library for Prime users

Fortune's curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you every day.

* Amazon (AMZN) is launching an e-book library today exclusively for Kindle and Kindle Fire users who are also Amazon Prime subscribers. Initially, the e-commerce giant will offer just 5,000 or so titles -- none of them from the six big publishing houses will. Each user will also only be MORE

Today in Tech: Apple iOS 5 gets reviewed

Fortune's curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

"Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don't get it." -- Google engineer Steve Yegge in a reportedly leaked blog post. (Silicon MORE