When Google launched the new Devices section of their Google Play Store, it only seemed like a matter of time before the company would eventually expand beyond selling just the unlocked Galaxy Nexus. After all, it’s called the Devices section for a reason.

While rumors of forthcoming Nexus tablets dance in our heads, Google has recently started carrying some new gear in the Play Store, though they’re decidedly not new or flashy. Users can now pick up Samsung vehicle and desktop docks to prop up their Galaxy Nexuses when needed, but here’s the thing — not all of you will be able to use them.

You see, the accessories listed work just fine with the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus, but you’re fresh out of luck if you’ve opted for one of the LTE-capable versions. Chalk it up to a very minor difference between the two versions’ waistlines, as the Verizon and Sprint variants are juuuust thick enough to render them incompatible.

Yeah, they aren’t exactly the additions I was hoping for either. Still, it’s a pretty clear sign that Google is more serious about their hardware offerings. If Google really is set on offering a score of new gadgets through their own web store, they can’t let those customers mosey on over to other retailers when it comes time for them to shell out extra money for related goodies, especially when accessories are where retailers often make up for money lost of device sales. I imagine that Google’s testing the waters a bit with this new turn — if they can entice users into buying other, supplementary knick-knacks from them instead of turning to mainstays like Amazon, you can bet they’ll do the same with any other devices they happen to start selling down the line.

Could Apple really be looking to end their longstanding affair with the 30-pin Dock Connector? It’s been a move that’s been rumored for years, and a job opening at Cupertino for a Connector Design Engineer adds a bit of fuel to that fire.

This person will be “responsible for managing multiple connector designs and developments in support of the iPod product lines.” It goes on to describe that this task will “involve adaptation of existing connectors or complete new designs.” It’s apparently important enough to Apple that they’ve got another, very similar listing on their jobs page.

It sounds like Apple isn’t just looking for a new lead engineer — Apple could be looking for a new iDevice interface.

The Dock Connector has lived a good life. Introduced in 2003 with the third generation iPod, the Dock Connector has been a trusted consort in the Apple army. But it’s time for retirement. Smaller, more compatible interconnects are more than capable of providing the power and a data connection. A MicroUSB-equipped iPhone might make Steve Jobs roll in his grave, but it would also make millions of users rejoice in the name of a universal connection.

As I’ve mentioned, people have been forecasting the death of the Dock Connector for years now. The reasoning is almost always the same: the sheer size of the Dock Connector is hindering Apple’s design. If Apple moved to something smaller, such as a Mini Dock Connector or even MicroUSB, this would allow for a larger range of designs. But Apple has yet to make the switch. That might change with the iPhone 5, though.

One of the leading iPhone 5 rumors, along with a significantly bigger screen, involves a new interconnect. Recent leaked iPhone 5 photos supposedly show what appears to be a MicroUSB port at the bottom of the device instead of the traditional Dock Connector. There have also been whispers of a MagSafe-like connector as well.

Even without this job posting, it’s pretty much accepted that the Dock Connector is nearing the end of its life. Even though there are better options, it will still be sorely missed. Just think of all the iDevice docks that will fall silent when their owners upgrade to the latest hardware — well, unless, Apple releases a pricey Dock Connector to Mini Dock Connector adapter.

[Hat tip to Wolfgang Bremer, CCO of Founder2be.com]

Well, that was quick. The news of an impending Flipboard Android beta only began making the rounds earlier this morning, and now the Flipboard team has opened up the beta process to anyone interested in taking the plunge.

Users interested in taking the pre-release version of the app for a spin can mosey over to Flipboard’s Android landing page, where they can sign up for the beta and wait patiently to receive a download link in their inbox. The confirmation email mentions that the waiting period could stretch up to 24 hours, though we’re hearing that plenty of people are receiving their download links without too much of a delay.

I managed to get the new version of the app up and running on my trusty Galaxy Nexus, and so it far seems plenty responsive (not to mention handsome) despite its beta label. Scrolling through lists of sources to cull content from is terribly snappy, and I can only detect the faintest bit of lag as I touch those sources’ icons to see more. Assuming you’ve got some robust hardware at your disposal, you probably won’t run into too many issues.

Not every device will be as lucky, though. I downloaded and tested the app onto my backup handset — a not-terribly-old myTouch 4G — and was told upon installation that the device “does not meet the minimum requirements is not supported by Flipboard.” After selecting some categories to add to my Flipboard, the app stalled out. I guess it’s a good thing Flipboard decided on the route they did, and with any luck the final product will be free of hiccups when the more widespread launch takes place in the coming months.

Your mileage will certainly vary — that’s sort of the point of this whole exercise — and the Flipboard team would appreciate any feedback you intrepid testers may have. If the app happens to force close, be a good citizen and report the issue instead of just closing the app and starting from scratch, will you?

And the facts back up the claim.

According to a new report examining consumer smartphone trends from global telecoms, media and technology specialist Analysys Mason, on average, iPhone customers use more data than any other smartphone users, and account for 80% of the top 10% of heaviest data users.

Of those smartphone consumers who are in the 70th percentile or above in terms of data usage, iPhone users appear more than three times as frequently as the next most ‘data-hungry’ consumer segment – users who have Android on HTC devices.

The report, in case you’re wondering, is truly global in that it is based on data derived from Arbitron Mobile’s on-device monitoring app that provided access to the smartphone behavior of more than 1000 panelists for two months in the USA, UK, France, Germany and Spain.

Other headline-worthy facts presented in the report include:

• 75% of panelists used Wi-Fi on their smartphone.
• 45% of panelists used instant messaging or over-the-top messaging services, almost half of whom used WhatsApp Messenger.
• More than 99% of panelists used their mobile browser at least once, for an average of 7.5 minutes per day.
• In the USA, 30% of consumers used more than 500MB of cellular data per month, compared with 13% in France and the UK, and only 8% in Germany.
• All mobile communications apps are used more by women than men, apart from mobile VoIP.

To learn more, click here.

For all its faults, Google Voice has gotten to be pretty solid with regard to how it routes calls from different groups of people, and today the search giant has gussied up the service even more. According to the official Google Voice blog, a new update now gives users more control over what to do with people who hide their phone numbers when they call.

But let’s back up a minute here.

If you haven’t used Google Voice before, the service issues you a phone number that acts as sort of a catch-all for all the mobile devices you juggle everyday. Part of how it lets users manage all those phone calls is by allowing them to specify how calls from specific people or members of a group are treated. Google has been tweaking that process recently, most notably with the integration of Google+ Circles back in February, but today’s addition came about purely because their users have been clamoring for it.

Today’s update gives users more control over what to do with anonymous callers — people whose phone numbers are for one reason or another withheld from view. Setting up a new rule to govern these classes of callers takes just a few seconds, and it’s a trivial process to route those calls to a specially-designated phone. Of course, if you’d rather not deal with calls from the nameless, you could always just route them straight to voicemail. The update also lets users create those same rulesets for anyone already stored in your contact list — maybe they deserve a slightly warmer recorded greeting than those folks who won’t disclose who they are.

It’s a nice enough update and I’m sure more than a few people are wringing their hands in anticipation, but really — can we please get some MMS support? Or a way to mark all of our messages read from the web app? It’s not like we Google Voice users haven’t been waiting a few years, after all.

The always controversial former baseball great is turning heads with some provocative comments he made on Twitter from his mobile device this week.

“Can a cuban born american be a mayor or governor in new england?” Canseco asked on Twitter. “I am here to help and want to do good for all the people.”

The MLB legend went on to delve into some of the issues he feels passionately about.

“I have now learned of air quality problems in Sudbury ,lack of dog neutering and road repair everywhere ,and lack of $ for FDs & PDs,” he continued, only adding what he will do – apparently – as an elected official. “I will make it possible to turn right on red in Danvers and will bring hispeed internet to Braintree and solve the power outage in Fenway.”

Incidentally, the spelling and grammatical errors above are his… not mine.

“Politics is easy if you use your ears and not your mouth,” he concluded. “Just listen you government morons listen.”

So did Canseco really just express his interest for running for Governor of Massachusetts on Twitter?

What do you think? And, more importantly, do you think he could actually be elected? Please weigh in with a thought or comment below.

Sounds like a simple enough concept. And fortunately for the publisher behind TabTimes, the business news magazine entirely devoted to tablets, is coming to the iPad today as a free app that some are already calling a “must have.”

“The iPad has already changed the lives of tens of millions of people,” the company behind the digital read says. “TabTimes for iPad will report on the front lines of this revolution with a business perspective. It will focus on how tablets are used for business, work and productivity, with a mix of news, features, reviews, interviews and how-to articles.”

TabTimes for iPad’s content is produced by journalists who previously worked for PC Magazine, MacLife, PC World and Infoworld.

Columnists include Ben Bajarin, a tech columnist for Time.com, Dan Rowinski, a writer at ReadWriteWeb, and Christina Tynan-Wood, a tech columnist at Family Circle magazine and a previous columnist for PC Magazine and PC World.

According to details made available in today’s press release from TabTimes, FileMaker and Accellion are the launch sponsors of the iPad app.

To get it, click here.

On Wednesday, Parks Associates announced the keynote speakers from AT&T, Best Buy, and Verizon for CONNECTIONS: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase at TIA 2012, which spans June 5-7 at the Gaylord Texan.

The event will end just in time for Apple’s WWDC to kick off the following week on June 11th.

The keynotes at CONNECTIONS will address the impact of broadband proliferation and the widespread adoption of connected and mobile CE devices.

With over 70% of U.S. households subscribing to broadband in 2012, consumers are turning to the Internet for both entertainment and home management. One-third of U.S. broadband households regularly use the Internet to watch shows and movies on TV. When presented with a variety of IP-based home monitoring and control services, nearly 65% of U.S. consumers consider at least one energy- or security-related interactive service as highly appealing.

“Consumers are starting to value services and devices within the context of the connected lifestyle,” said Stuart Sikes, president of Parks Associates. “Our keynote speakers all bring unique expertise in matching consumer demands to new solutions while leveraging strong brand names to ensure successful deployment.”

The speakers confirmed today include:

• Kevin Petersen, Senior Vice President at AT&T Digital Life and AT&T Services.
• Mike Ritter, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer and Mass Business Markets for Verizon.
• Kristen Bowring, Senior Director, Platform Lead Home and Energy Management, at Best Buy.

To learn more about the forthcoming gala, click here.

We’ve heard a lot about how monetizing mobile content is difficult in the context of Facebook’s recent IPO. A lot of the company’s growth is coming from mobile, after all, but it’s currently very hard to make money of this mobile traffic. At AllThingsD’s D10 conference today, Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker released her annual overview of Internet trends and she, too, highlighted this mobile monetization problem.

Here is the good news: Global mobile Internet traffic is growing rapidly right now and has now reached about 10% of all Internet traffic. Mobile commerce now makes up about 8% of U.S. e-commerce and grew over 15% last year.

At the same time, mobile monetization is also growing rapidly, though 71% of the revenue there is coming from apps and only 29% from ads. Generally, ad spend tends to line up with the amount of time we spend with a certain medium and while we currently spend about 10% of our time with mobile devices, only 1% of U.S. ad spend currently goes to mobile. According to Meeker, there is generally a lag between the increase (and decline) of the time we spend with a certain kind of media and ad spend catching up with it, so in her view, it’s really only a matter of time before mobile monetization catches up.

For the time being, says Meeker, eCPMs still remain 5x lower on mobile than desktop and the average revenue per user (ARPU) also remains far behind on mobile.

Meeker, however, highlighted that some companies, including Japanese social/mobile gaming company GREE, which managed to increase its average revenue per registered member from just $10 in early 2011 to over $24 in the first quarter of 2012. Another Japanese mobile gaming company, CyberAgent, now sees a higher mobile ARPU than on the desktop.

Overall then, Meeker believes that the current problems with mobile monetization are just a temporary issue. She believes that mobile monetization levels in the U.S. could surpass the desktop within 1-3 years. “Mobile monetization,” in her view, “has more going for it than early desktop monetization.”

You can find Meeker’s complete presentation here.

Parse, the Y Combinator-backed startup that powers the back-end for mobile apps like Band of the Day and Hipmunk, is rolling out support for mobile web apps too.

The San Francisco startup has a new SDK for JavaScript that makes it easier to build HTML5 apps. Parse has long billed itself as the “Heroku for Mobile,” a service that takes over the hassle of building a scalable back-end for applications.

The new Javascript SDK comes with security controls, flexible data storage, advanced data queries, user authentication and geolocation. It’s built on top of the Backbone.js JavaScript framework from DocumentCloud. Parse co-founder Tikhon Bernstam said about 38 percent of the company’s developers had requested HTML5 support. Their current split between iOS and Android is about 65-to-35, but many use both.

“Developers want their users to be able to log into the same accounts with JavaScript mobile applications,” he said. “This actually makes a whole new class of apps possible.” The SDK works with mobile browsers including mobile Safari, the default Android browser and WebKit-powered browsers. It also works with desktop browsers like Chrome and Internet Explorer 8.

One of the things Parse is emphasizing most about the new SDK is its control over security. Parse says that the security enhancements in the SDK, like per-object Access Control Lists, have never been previously available in a JavaScript back-end service.

As for Parse itself, the company is growing at a 40 percent month-over-month rate and has about 16,000 apps on the platform. It’s a freemium service, with a $199 per month plan for apps with up to 15 million API requests per month. There is also an enterprise version that doesn’t have a listed price and is negotiable.

While there are many competitors including Kinvey and Stackmob, Bernstam says they’re not worried. “Our biggest competitor are developers who want to roll their own back-end solution.”

Parse recently raised $5.5 million. They’re so bent on becoming the “Heroku of mobile” that they even took funding from the same venture investor, John Connors, at Ignition Partners. Just for reminders, Heroku was one of Y Combinator’s biggest exits to date when it sold to Salesforce for $212 million.

In a new interview at the D10 conference this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook confessed that the Ping social network has failed to drum up substantial excitement from the masses.

“We tried Ping and and I think the consumer voted and said this isn’t something we want to put a lot of energy into,” Cook revealed.

The Apple chief, however, didn’t spend too much time discussing Ping. Instead, he focused on doing what’s necessary to keep Apple growing and moving in the right direction.

Cook said his late boss Steve Jobs is always on his mind and that the corporate culture Jobs cultivated won’t be changed on his watch.

“I’m not going to witness or permit the change of it,” the Apple chief said.

“It was absolutely the saddest days of my life when he passed away,” Cook added when asked about Jobs’ passing. “At some point late last year, somebody sort of shook me and said it’s time to get on, and the sadness was replaced with determination.”

It’s been fascinating to watch the proliferation of photo apps before and since the rise of Instagram and its sale to Facebook. EyeEm has a beautiful app which makes tagging images to locations ridiculously simple (plus all that filter goodness). LoopCam makes hilarious photo loops you want to share with your friends. Now SlickFlick has appeared with an iOS app to help you create fun stories around your pictures. [download from iTunes here]

The boot-strapped startup was founded by Maria Constantinescu who has been relentless in pushing her vision for the last two years and today she lands a big-brother partner in the shape of the Getty image library.

Basically you create visual stories on the fly your iPhone and then share or embed them. Using it is a bit like creating a film storyboard. A good example is their “Zuck & Priscilla” story, made in 2 minutes, which recently went viral.

Now, the vast Getty Images will make its entire library available to users of the SlickFlick app. Users create stories with their own photos or add in images form the library, then share them on the site or on social media.

SlickFlick is based in London but developed out of Romania, and Constantinescu has been a champion of the region’s development talent.

This is an app worth checking out an playing with. My feeling is that the next stage would be to upload sound, perhaps by integrating SoundCloud.

According to a new report from Fiksu – the fast growing mobile app user acquisition platform – mobile app downloads continued to decline in April 2012, while the cost to acquire loyal users simultaneously picked up.

Movement in the social networking and games categories in the Apple App Store introduced new mobile advertising opportunities and heightened competition, causing the mobile marketing costs to increase, the report suggests.

The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index (which measures the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps) dropped by 4.9 percent to 4.23 million daily downloads, down from 4.45 million in March.

Despite the dip, no one at Apple is going into panic mode with regard to this apparent download dilemma.

“April’s continued downward trajectory of app downloads was expected, as no major events sparked discovery during the month,” said Micah Adler, CEO of Fiksu. “Additionally, app marketers continued to scale back their use of robotic install tactics in response to Apple’s policy on third-party marketing services.”

“However, we observed more aggressive advertising spending as marketers moved out of the first quarter lull and began to seek new opportunities to compete for rank especially in the dynamic social networking and games categories, which experienced volatility during the month,” Adler concluded.

According to the partners, the partnership enables T-Mobile’s app and game developers to accept in-app payments from T-Mobile’s 34 million subscribers.

Applications and games will be distributed and marketed through the T-Mobile Mall, and transactions completed using Boku will be billed directly to a subscriber’s T-Mobile bill.

Developers can integrate in-app payments into their Android app with BOKU’s 1-TapTM SDK for Android. This will increase consumer conversion and expand their global customer reach simply by dropping the BOKU Android SDK into their application.

All told, the deal simplifies mobile services for customers, particularly the purchase experience as it eliminates the need to manually enter credit card information.

“With this agreement,” Boku says, “T-Mobile customers will be able to access the T-Mobile Mall’s portfolio of games and use mobile payments to purchase a wide variety of in-app content within downloaded apps, including virtual goods found in online games from publishers.”

The Evo 4G LTE is one of the best phones to land on Sprint shelves in a while, but that’s not to say it has no competition over at the Yellow carrier. The Galaxy Nexus has propped itself up as the Android phone to beat, while the iPhone 4S is available at the same price: $199.

So what will it take to pass up the iPhone and the GalNex for the latest iteration of the Evo line?

We’ve put together this head-to-head chart to answer just such a question.

As you can see, specs between the Evo and the GalNex are quite similar. The only noticeable differences come by way of UI and design language. If a pure Android experience is what you’re looking for, I would definitely recommend the Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

But there are also some HTC fans out there who happen to love the Sense UI, in which case the Evo would likely be the right choice. The design language is rather strong on the Evo 4G LTE, with soft touch gray, red metal, and shiny black plastic comprising the backside of the handset. The GalNex is a bit more reserved.

And still, there’s the iPhone 4S to consider. Sure, the display is much smaller (3.5-in vs 4.65/.7-in), but the Retina display easily rivals much larger 720p displays. And few can resist the beautiful minimalist design of the iPhone and the intuitive functionality of iOS.

Luckily, the decision is yours and not mine. Enjoy!

Hands-on initial impressions of the Evo 4G LTE can be found here, and a full review will go live in the next couple days. Stay tuned!

Betting big on the future monetization opportunities to be found in the “smart TV” ecosystem is boxPAY, a company which is now bringing the carrier billing option to TV apps and services. With boxPAY, consumers can pay for Smart TV apps or make in-app purchases by charging those purchases to their mobile phone, no registration or credit card required. Instead, the purchase would show up on the customer’s next monthly bill from their mobile operator.

Next week, the company will be demonstrating its service at the E3 conference in Los Angeles, where its software development kit (SDK) will be up-and-running on a Samsung Smart TV, the first platform the company plans to support. However, the team expects to have a version for Google TV in a month, which means it could also support the LG sets which are running Google TV (the newer models, that is). Although next week will be the company’s public debut, Gavin says they’ve already demonstrated the platform to a number of the biggest Smart TV manufacturers, but don’t have signed deals in place so can’t disclose names.

To be clear, the service will work on different types of Smart TV platforms, not just Samsung’s or Google’s. Explains boxPAY co-founder Gavin McConnon, “some Smart TV manufacturers have their own app stores, and some use Google TV, or the Google Play store. BoxPAY has built our in-app billing product to work in both environments,” he says. McConnon adds that the team would “love to work with Google Play” as its carrier billing partner, but Google already offers carrier billing. That, of course, could be a limiting factor for its growth, unless they can figure out how to strike a deal. (Or Google TV doesn’t take off, ahem). McConnon notes boxPAY already has over 200 carrier relationships in 60 countries, however, which should at least be enticing to potential partners. Customers are charged either by Direct Operator Billing, or, in some cases, Premium SMS.  Gavin adds that the company plans to reach out to Boxee and Roku in the future, too.

BoxPAY was founded in 2011 in Dublin, Ireland by Gavin and his brother Iain McConnon, as an evolution of their previous premium mobile content company, which is currently how it’s being funded. The company now has offices in San Francisco, Sydney, and Johannesburg, and operates with a staff of 35. Gavin has been working in telecommunications for 10 years, and has launched four telecom businesses, including Global Billing Solutions, and, in 2006, Ireland’s first movie download service, Moviestar.ie (sold to ScreenClick in 2009).

Sometimes you just gotta do your own thing. Such was the case with Boris Vaisman, who dropped out of Y Combinator’s winter batch (where he was on kid-safe phone lockdown tool, Kyte). Says Vaisman, it was just a matter of “having a different vision in terms of how to move forward.” So what has Vaisman, along with co-founder Ankush Agarwal, now launched instead? Play Safe, an app for Android that lets kids safely play games on your own smartphone.

To be honest, Kyte has the arguably bigger vision. It wants to provide a kid-friendly user interface for kids’ own Android smartphones. A Net Nanny for the modern age, if you will, but one infused with family-friendly features. However, that company is a bit of ahead of today’s reality (as well it should be, this is cutting edge stuff here). Only half of the U.S.’s mobile phones are smartphones. Today’s kids are still not necessarily rockin’ an iPhone or Android. The picture is changing, though. Nielsen says that two-thirds of all handsets being sold are smartphones. There will come a time when you will buy a phone, and it will be smart.

In the meantime, a more common scenario is one where your kid (or for the childless: those grubby small people who your friends keep toting around), grabs your phone and starts to play games. Or whines for your phone until you give in and hand it over.

The problem here, explains Vaisman, is that the kids download apps, delete your own apps, or access parts of your phone that they should not be messing around with. (The horror of finding you kid in your inbox I cannot describe.) It’s a serious issue. The solution? With Play Safe, kids are given a simple, pre-approved dashboard which lists only the games and apps you’re OK with them launching. In testing, our 2-year was fine with it. She said she didn’t really know what she was doing on the Android homescreen anyway.

For now, the exit procedure from the dashboard is just hidden, not password-protected. You push and hold the Play Safe logo for 5 seconds straight to leave the app. Vaisman says that password protection will be added within a week. That will allow the app to be used with older kids, who are savvier about these things and are bound to figure out the trick.

Vaisman and Agarwal are in bootstrapping mode now, but hope to use the app (currently free and ad-free) as the starting point to build a company whose focus is on family-friendly applications. Future apps would be paid and/or monetized in other ways, but with Play Safe,  they’re looking to build credibility with parents and establish their brand.

Play Safe is live in the Android Market Google Play Store here.

After a rough day yesterday, RIM’s stock opened 10 percent lower today, trading at $10.05 at the opening bell. The stock price briefly recovered but it’s on a steady downward trend as of the writing of this post. If this slide continues, the stock is set to hit a low not seen since 2003.

Trading of RIM shares was halted for 15 minutes yesterday in order to issue a what the company called a “business update“. CEO Thorsten Heins detailed RIM’s recent challenges, and also explained that the company is employing the help of Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to evaluate financial strategies. The company also warned that it will report a loss for the fiscal quarter ending on June 2. This came on the heels of report that states RIM is set to lay off a major chunk of its workforce.

Things at RIM are set to get worse before they get better. It seems nearly every week another high-placed executive is leaving the company. The RIM of the future (if there is a future for RIM) will look nothing like the RIM of the past.

I still believe RIM can recover. The company has a good chunk of the enterprise smartphone market and the products in the pipeline are very compelling. However, RIM needs to make it through these dark days first and hiring bankers is a good start.

Much has been said about the Nokia 808 Pureview since its debut at MWC in February, but most recently the rumors have centered around delayed availability in the UK. The phone, and its 41-megapixel camera, weren’t expected to hit shelves across the pond until July.

But according to Amazon’s UK site, the phone will be available on June 21 unlocked for £499.98 (US$778). Camera happy customers are more than welcome to place their pre-orders now.

The big selling point for the 808 Pureview (if you haven’t already figured it out) is a 41-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss sensor. To be fair, that 41-megapixel figure is a bit misleading.

In actuality, the camera is taking 41 megapixels of raw data, shrinking it down to improve resolution, and churning out something closer to an 8-megapixel photo. That 8-megapixel photo, however, will be much better than an 8-megapixel image taken with a much smaller sensor (the Pureview 808 sensor is 1/1.2″).

The phone, on the other hand, is more of a beast than a beauty. It’s clunky, and it runs Symbian. But surely there are some early adopters out there waiting to get a taste of Pureview imaging — it will, after all, appear on Nokia’s Windows Phones soon enough.

[via SoMobile]

According to the IDC, 17.4 million tablets were shipped worldwide in the first quarter, with the lion’s share (68 percent) of those being iPads. As the iPad’s popularity has grown, it’s begun to find increasing adoption in the enterprise and among IT decision makers. As a result, some companies are looking to find better ways to utilize the iPad’s interface and unique display to present and visualize business data in more exciting and engaging ways.

Roambi, one of these slick new business intelligence (BI) apps, is finding success enabling companies to transform their snooze-inducing Salesforce, Oracle, or SAP data (i.e. BI data) into interactive mobile dashboards, snappy charts and sexy graphs, and instantly deliver them to the iPad.

Building on its initial use case, last year Roambi released its so-called “Roambi Flow”, an app and content system that allows users to easily create and share original documents and interactive reports using analytics, text, graphics, video, and collaborative content.

Designed with the iPad interface in mind, those reports really look more like magazine-style publications, but based entirely on the custom content you provide. (Not unlike a BI data-version of Inkling.)

And today MeLLmo (the creator of Roambi) is taking its functionality one step further, moving from simply being a content creator to becoming a distributor and publisher as well, by launching a new platform that enables organizations to deliver analytics and multimedia content to anyone with an iPad. In other words, the key value proposition for the new platform is that companies can now not only create interactive reports in Roambi Flow, but actually turn those magazine-style reports into apps that can be published on the App Store, with customer logos, etc.

The platform also includes new licensing and features that give businesses the ability to distribute their custom Roambi reports both internally, just to staff, or externally to customers and consumers. They can also create and distribute co-branded materials in a single issue or series as iPad apps, saving money by removing the need to hire specialized designers, and, in turn, extending the reach of their brand thanks to the App Store’s massive, built-in user base.

As an illustrative example, an analyst firm, say, could upload a PDF, automatically transform it into a Roambi Flow document (i.e. a flip-style magazine for iPad), add interactive analytics, photos and videos, and then publish it as their own app on the App Store — either for targeted customers or open download.

What’s more, companies can do this over and over, ad nauseum, publishing a bunch of separate apps or creating multiple editions within one. That company could also use its distribution mechanism to continuously publish the most up-to-date sales presentations for their sales force, for example, or use it as a marketing tool, publishing brochure-style content for open downloading.

In addition to its platform launch, the startup is today introducing Roambi Pulse — its tenth visualization tool for the iPad — which allows users to compare key performance indicators in animated, vivid display. By embedding historical performance of key metrics within interactive titles, users can swipe and tap their way through (what are presumably) more compelling and engaging insights. A Roambi Pulse sample can be found in the free Roambi app now available in the App Store.

As for integration? Roambi’s platform connects with a mess of business information sources and integrates with existing systems from IBM Cognos, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP BusinessObjects, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and Google Docs.

MeLLmo raised $30 million from Sequoia in its first round of institutional funding back in September.

For more info, find Roambi at home here.

One of the nice little surprises at Samsung’s Galaxy S III unveiling in London was that the device would be preloaded with the fabled Android version of the Flipboard social magazine app. The news came from out of the blue — while the iOS version has garnered plenty of acclaim and some nifty new updates, Android users were (largely) left out in the cold.

Now it appears that the app will soon be finding its way onto other Android devices, but perhaps not in the way that most users would hope. According to a new report from Engadget, the Flipboard team is close to releasing a beta version of the app to a small number of users to gain critical feedback before launching the final product.

But why the slow and steady approach? Engadget’s sources say it’s because of the sheer number of devices they have to account for. As wonderful has having a device for every niche is, it’s pretty clear that the process of ensuring a consistent experience across multiple hardware configurations can be a real headache. It seems especially difficult when the iOS version of the app has become well known for its handsome design and solid usability — making sure that experience carries over to the hordes of Android devices floating around out there is certainly no trivial feat.

Flipboard is being very smart about how it goes about making those final tweaks. There will always be people willing to go through the extra work of loading up an .apk on their device in order to be the first to have something, and using them as a testbed for a wider release down the line only makes sense. For now though, there’s still no official word on a release date — the Flipboard for Android page only says that the app will launch in “the coming months.”

UPDATE: Flipboard has shed a bit more light on how the beta process will work.

It’s a private beta where people who want to participate can send us their email and we’ll email them a build to test. They do have to configure their phone, but we send along instructions. We won’t be sending out a press release about this since it’s not meant for the general public, but I wanted you to hear it from us.

You will start to see Flipboard on some of the Samsung Galaxy SIII phones as they become available and the beta program will help us get ready for launching more broadly on Android phones this summer.

Those of you who don’t care much for minor imperfections can dive right in though — the .apk was pulled from a Galaxy S III demo unit prior to launch, and you too can join in the fun provided you know where to look.

Today PayPal opened up a new front in its strategy to expand its role in mobile payments, a business PayPal projects will generate it $7 billion in revenue this year. The eBay-owned payments company today launched a new retail mobile payments app for iOS and Android devices, PayPal InStore, where users can create barcodes that get scanned to deduct payments from users’ PayPal accounts. Available only in the UK, clothing chains Coast, Oasis, Warehouse, and Karen Millen are the first to sign on to the service, and PayPal tells me there are no plans to add NFC to the app any time soon.

PayPal InStore underscores some of the challenges that remain with NFC technology. Yesterday, Gartner presented a picture of a $172-billion mobile payments industry that is still largely based around older technologies like SMS and web-based payments, with newer services like NFC chips playing a very marginal role. And Juniper Research today noted that transactions made on NFC phones in North America and Western Europe will account for less than two percent of all mobile payments this year.

PayPal InStore is one example of how retailers and others can use techonologies available today to offer mobile payments. In this case, a user creates a barcode for a product in the app. He/She then presents their device to get it scanned by the cashier. The amount then gets deducted from a users’ PayPal account.

I asked PayPal whether the door is open for the app to be upgraded to NFC when the chip technology is more ubiquitous — it would certainly make sense, given that it would speed up use of the service. The answer? Not really.

“We think that it will take years for NFC to get any kind of traction in stores, but we are helping retailers roll out mobile payments quickly and cheaply now,” said Rob Skinner, PayPal’s spokesperson in the UK. “We’re not dismissing NFC but our point is that the world may have moved on by the time NFC gets some kind of scale.”

This appears to be the first time that PayPal has launched a barcode-based app. It is not available in the U.S. and Skinner says there are no plans to roll it out elsewhere, either.

“This particular solution is not in the U.S.,” he said, noting that a region-specific service is all part PayPal’s 2012 plan: “It’s a test and learn year for PayPal and our retail partners.”

PayPal last week expanded its mobile payment services in the U.S. by adding 15 more major retailers to the list of those supporting the payments company’s apps in that market. In the UK, the company has a headstart with its branding: as TNW points out its main mobile app broke the 1-million user mark as far back as 2010. Skinner also points out that the high penetration of smartphone users in the UK makes it worthwhile to try out new payment methods here.

PayPal has been looking at a number of different technologies to enable mobile payments. It has trialled NFC, launched a dongle-based service called Here, and looked at ways of using pin codes and credit cards to complete the payments from users’ PayPal accounts — this is the service it has trialled with Best Buy and will likely be the basis of the expansion announced last week. As for PayPal InStore, the Inquirer notes that Windows and BlackBerry versions are also under development.

Meanwhile, Juniper’s NFC projections, in contrast to Gartner’s, are significantly more optimistic about how much NFC will be used, and about how much money will be generated from NFC.

Juniper predicts in its new report that one in four consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe will tap, wave and hover NFC-enabled handsets at points of sale to buy goods by 2017. Juniper’s principal analyst, Windsor Holden, says that works out to $180 billion in mobile NFC transactions by 2017 — just $8 billion more than Gartner believes will be made in mobile payments overall this year. Gartner says that the total transactional value for all kinds of mobile payments will be $617 billion by 2016.

One area where both analysts seem to agree is on the complexity and challenges in making NFC work. Chief among them is that there are a number of parties involved in enabling payments — mobile operators, handset makers, payment providers, retailers and banks — and as Juniper points out a “single point of contact to take responsibility” will be needed to make these services gain credibility with users.

So far, we’ve seen a lot of efforts, including Google Wallet, the Isis consortium, and several commercial projects in Europe (eg, France Telecom working with Visa) — but no clear leader in NFC emerging out of all of that.

Nokia today announced it is losing another senior executive: Esko Aho, who had once been the prime minister of Finland and is currently EVP, corporate relations and responsibility and a member of Nokia’s leadership team, is leaving the beleaguered handset maker for Harvard University. There, he will be the Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School for public policy. He had been with Nokia since 2008 and a member of the executive team since 2009.

In his role at Nokia, Aho had overseen the company’s global policies and activities regarding sustainable development and social responsibility. Although his departure may not appear as destabilizing as some other executive exits — Colin Giles, Nokia’s EVP of sales, is leaving at the end of June and is not being replaced —  it is still a sign of how much the company is shedding the old guard as it looks to turn its struggling business around.

On a wider scale, Nokia has lost about 9,000 employees in the last year, according to the FT, and may well reduce its 122,000 headcount even more in the months ahead.

Nokia said in an emailed statement that Aho will leave the company at the end of August, but that he will remain involved as a consultant on public affairs (i.e., lobbying the Finnish government, or advising on how best to?).

Nokia has been on a steady decline in its mobile phone business — and has struggled particularly in the area of smartphones, where it has lost market share to Apple and to Android handset makers like Samsung. This quarter, by many estimates, Samsung overtook Nokia as the world’s biggest mobile phone company.

Under its latest CEO, Stephen Elop, Nokia has been trying to turn that trend around and has put his former employer Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS at the core of that strategy, although judging by its latest quarterly earnings, where sales fell by more than $4 billion, that plan has yet to bear significant and ripe fruit.

Since launching in mid-2011, doxo has been on a mission to make your life paperless. With its “digital filing cabinet” software, the Seattle-based startup aims to create a single place for users to manage their bills, be they phone, cable, or credit card.

Of course, the world is quickly going mobile, and payment solutions are going right along with it. So, in an effort to close the loop between web and mobile services, Doxo is today launching a new mobile payment and management solution, along with a new Android app, to finally allow users to both receive and pay bills from their mobile devices.

Doxo’s new Android app complements the updated iOS app the startup launched last summer so that the pair of apps now allow users to take advantage of mobile bill payment and management on top of its flagship “digital file cabinet” and secure backup offerings.

Both apps now include the startup’s new so-called “doxoPAY,” a feature that allows users to receive and pay bills with one account and one password from a single app. This means that you no longer have to set up separate usernames and access credentials to manage payment accounts across multiple websites, instead, you can simply create a free Doxo account to start organizing your household accounts and docs, connecting with service providers that include AT&T, Sprint, Puget Sound Energy, and Sound Community Bank — to name a few.

The startup is currently hard at work on expanding this list, signing up as many banks, public utilities, and major phone and cable carriers as it can. Obviously, while the value proposition is evident, for Doxo to truly become your default digital file cabinet and bill payment solution, it has to be integrated with all the providers you’re using. That’s half the battle, and it still has a ways to go there.

That being said, Doxo has the potential to significantly mitigate a huge pain in the ass for consumers. For most people, whether you receive bills electronically or in good old paper form, payment is a three step process: Read the bill when and wherever you receive it, open it again when you’re ready to pay, and then file through another system. Doxo’s mobile payment solution condenses that down to a single step by embedding payment options in the bill itself.

Users simply connect with their providers to pay bills, directly on Doxo Mobile, receiving bills from those providers while uploading documents and bills from home or on the go, with the added benefit of being able to manage, upload, and organize account information, important documents, and bills by account. Plus, you can use the apps to snap photos and upload bills and receipts into Doxo’s digital filing cabinet, while automatically backing up those critical documents to their hard drive or cloud providers like Box.com and Dropbox.

On the flip side, for businesses, Doxo is trying to eliminate the hurdles most often cited by consumers in regard to going paperless. Not only that, but it can streamline and reduce the additional costs inherent to most customer-provider interaction by speeding collection, cutting credit card fees (like overdue payments), and make it easy to go paperless. Which, for businesses, can mean eliminating the need for custom software — or having to develop their own standalone app.

According to Doxo CEO Steve Shivers, this translates to businesses saving an average of 80 percent on the cost of mailing documents, bills, and accepting payments. And, of course, the best part is that, because Doxo saves businesses money on paper, its mobile apps are free for the consumer — and available in the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store.

Founded in 2008, Doxo seemed to miss the memo on the whole “ship or die” approach, taking its sweet time to go to market, testing and developing for over two years before finally coming out of invite-only beta last summer. Better safe (and market ready) than sorry. Of course, it also helps one’s slow and steady method when there’s $15 million in venture funding from Sigma Partners, Mohr Davidow, and Jeff Bezos to fall back on.

For more, check out Doxo at home here.

Facebook had another tough day today in the public markets, with shares now trading at around $28 after debuting less than two weeks ago at $42.05. Good timing, then, for a new slideshow report out today from the boutique French consulting firm faberNovel, which encourages us to look at the bigger picture, and why, in its words, Facebook is “the perfect startup.”

The mammoth slideshow (after the break) is an annual thing for faberNovel, which picks one company to tackle each year — others have included how Amazon controls e-commerce, how Apple dominates, and what could go wrong with Google. Like those before, the one out today on Facebook is a deep-dive into the company, and it looks not just at the origins of the social network, but what sets it apart from other attempts at global social networks — and other startups. (And by the way, faberNovel sees all this drama and attention on the IPO as just “one point on a startup trajectory.” Some investors may not feel quite the same.)

In 94 fairly packed slides (no Kreiger approach here), there is a huge amount of data, occasionally usefully visualizing some of the biggest challenges the company faces. (Example: Facebook’s monetization issue. It is getting ten times more traffic than YouTube, but only one-tenth the revenue of YouTube’s owner, Google.)

A little later, looking back at Facebook’s different tests with advertising, faberNovel makes a good argument for how a lack of success with more traditional models has contributed to it being such an innovative company. Specifically, around new, social ad formats (that’s slide 34), even if some of those formats have yet to pay off when compared to how much time users spend on the site.

“Facebook has no choice but to change the game’s rules,” faberNovel explains, which is perhaps the crux of why it has done so well.

What caught my attention the most — possibly because of all the news of the past week swirling around Facebook and its mobile plans — was faberNovel’s take on Facebook’s mobile business.

Facebook already has a huge amount of users on mobile (more than 400 million of its 901 million active users are accessing by mobile), but it could quite possibly get squeezed out of mobile altogether because of Apple and Google’s own control of the ecosystems, and the fact that eventually other and better mobile apps will come along.

That has left Facebook with no choice but to beef up with acquisitions, more features and its own beginnings of a mobile platform. Specifically, faberNovel believes the App Center could really become a game-changer and the lynchpin for how Facebook begins to “own” its users on mobile devices.

FaberNovel then takes this one step further and proclaims that, with its large mobile user base and variety of services, “Facebook is a new breed of telco.”

It even idly wonders if the company could, one day, even operate its own ad-hoc Mesh network to put the final piece into the puzzle. Is that a speculation too far? In a world of $100-billion-plus valuations for largely free services, perhaps anything is possible.

Canadian smartphone manufacturer RIM has briefly ceased trading of their stock today in order to issue a “business update” from CEO Thorsten Heins to their stockholders.

Though the release takes the time to outline some of the company’s recent personnel changes, Heins also points out that the company has enlisted the services of both the Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to help the company evaluate their financial strategies going forward.

To quote Mr. Heins:

To further enhance our commitment to successfully completing our transformation, after the release of our year-end financial results, we engaged J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM’s business and financial performance. These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives.

For those still unfamiliar with Mr. Heins’ M.O., he’s made it very clear in the past that he will consider all potential options to ensure that the ailing smartphone company has a future. That includes the possibility of licensing their still-incomplete BlackBerry 10 operating system to other hardware manufacturers down the line, as well as the extreme possibility of selling the company entirely. Whether or not either of the financial advisors the company has been consorting with will prod him in either of those directions is still unclear, but at this point it seems like Heins needs a bit of help plotting the company’s course.

There are a few other juicy tidbits to be found as well — Heins notes that the transition period RIM is currently attempting to wade through has been a tricky one, and that the company (perhaps unsurprisingly) will likely report an operating loss in their forthcoming Q1 earnings report. On the upside, the BlackBerry World conference seems to have done a decent enough job driving developers to BlackBerry 10 — the free hardware probably didn’t hurt — and the company now reports that there are 80,000 BlackBerry apps floating around in their App World.

While we shouldn’t get too hung up on numbers, the Windows Phone Marketplace hit that milestone last month, and that platform has only been around for roughly two years. In short, RIM still has a long to go to prove that their platform is still one to keep our eyes on.

RIM thought the news big enough to temporarily ceased all trading activity, a move they’re rather familiar with. They pulled something similar back in March just ahead of the release of their disappointing fourth quarter financials and the announcement that co-CEO Jim Balsillie was stepping away from the board of directors.

The full release has been reproduced below:

Research In Motion Limited (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today provided a business update from Thorsten Heins, the Company’s President and CEO.

“During the Q4 2012 and fiscal year-end financial results conference call on March 29, I said that I would provide our shareholders with candid and timely updates when possible on the progress and challenges RIM is experiencing. While we are no longer giving quantitative financial guidance, I wanted to provide a brief business update at this time, and will provide more details when our Q1 financial results for the quarter ended June 2, 2012 are released on June 28.

In terms of challenges, as I mentioned on the March financial results conference call, RIM is going through a significant transformation as we move towards the BlackBerry 10 launch, and our financial performance will continue to be challenging for the next few quarters. The on-going competitive environment is impacting our business in the form of lower volumes and highly competitive pricing dynamics in the marketplace, and we expect our Q1 results to reflect this, and likely result in an operating loss for the quarter. We are continuing to be aggressive as we compete for our customers’ business – both enterprise and consumer – around the world, and our teams are working hard to provide cost-competitive, feature-rich solutions to our global customer base. On the positive side, we expect to further increase our cash position in Q1 from the approximately $2.1 billion we had at the end of fiscal 2012.

Despite the current challenges, we have made significant progress on a number of fronts in the past few months:

Our annual BlackBerry World conference and BlackBerry 10 Jam took place earlier this month and both were tremendously successful. More than 5,000 developers, partners, carriers and enterprise customers from 115 different countries saw the first glimpses of our next-generation BlackBerry 10 platform and their response was encouraging.

Our developer partners have been enthusiastic with the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype unit we distributed at BlackBerry World and many are well underway in developing applications to be ready for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the latter part of calendar 2012.

The support and enthusiasm from our developer community is also reflected in our app growth, where we now feature more than 80,000 apps, which represents a 220% increase from one year ago, and more than 15,000 apps for PlayBook compared to less than 2,000 last year. We believe this bodes well for our ecosystem as we get set to launch BlackBerry 10.

We are making steady progress with the innovation of our next-generation BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform, which is still on track to launch in the latter part of calendar 2012.

Our global subscriber base continued to grow this quarter to approximately 78 million, driven primarily by growth in international markets, which is partially offset by high churn in the United States, and our BBM user base has grown to approximately 59 million users globally.

Our strong brand internationally was recently enhanced with the successful launch of two new BlackBerry 7 phones in India and Latin America.

We continue to make strategic changes to RIM’s senior management team with the hiring of two key new members to RIM’s executive leadership team. Kristian Tear, our Chief Operating Officer, whose background also includes extensive experience in international sales in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and Frank Boulben, our Chief Marketing Officer, who will provide our team with deep experience in the mobile computing and communications industry. Both will assist me and the existing executive team as we continue to make the organizational changes necessary to position RIM for the future and prepare for the launch of our new BlackBerry 10 platform.

The CORE (cost optimization and resource efficiency) program we told you about previously is focused on delivering key operational savings through various initiatives. The financial objectives for the CORE program are targeted to drive $1 billion in savings by the end of fiscal 2013, based on our Q4 run rate. We are targeting better efficiency and use of resources in our sales and marketing initiatives to effectively leverage marketing windows and evaluate our country portfolio to determine where it makes sense for us to prioritize our efforts. We will also continue to review RIM’s organizational structure and clearly define accountabilities for all key businesses and business processes with a goal of eliminating fragmentation, duplication and inefficiencies. While there will be significant spending reductions and headcount reductions in some areas throughout the remainder of the fiscal year, we will continue to spend and hire in key areas such as those associated with the launch of BlackBerry 10, and those tied to the growth of our application developer community. We will share more details regarding our progress throughout the year as programs are implemented or changes are completed.

To further enhance our commitment to successfully completing our transformation, after the release of our year-end financial results, we engaged J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM’s business and financial performance. These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives.

Although we are facing challenges, we remain excited about BlackBerry 10 and believe that this platform coupled with the results of the strategic review will create long-term value for our stakeholders. We will provide another more detailed business update when we report our first quarter results in June.”

Developing…

The company surveyed 500 small business owners with under 100 employees and found that while 69% of small businesses consider mobile marketing crucial to their growth in the next five years, a majority of them are yet to fully leverage the medium.

“With more and more consumers specifically searching for local businesses on their mobile devices, it is imperative that small businesses invest in a mobile presence,” said David Brown, chairman and chief executive officer of Web.com. “Having a mobile presence can be a huge competitive advantage for small businesses trying to attract local customers by instantly introducing a potential customer to their business’ products and services in a mobile-enhanced way.”

Among the findings, the survey also revealed that . . .

1. U.S. Small Businesses Maintain Good Web-Presence But Still Lack Mobile Presence: While 60% of small businesses surveyed have a website, only 26% have a mobile-friendly website (same layout/content as standard site adjusted to suit your smartphone screen) while an even smaller percentage (14% of small business owners have a stand-alone mobile website (content/layout designed specifically for mobile purposes).
2. 84% of Small Businesses Currently with Mobile Presence See Increase in New Business Activity: Out of the 500 small business owners surveyed, 14% have a stand-alone mobile website, of which 84% indicated that they have seen an increase in new business activity due to their mobile marketing efforts. This alone serves as validation to make the move into mobile for the majority of small businesses that are skeptical to invest in mobile efforts.
3. While Mobile Search Becomes Mainstream, Small Businesses Still Not Ready to be Found Via Smartphones: There is a large gap between the rapidly increasing mobile search volumes and the majority of small businesses lagging behind in mobile search strategy. Over 61% of small businesses currently do not have a mobile search strategy and are missing out on consumers trying to find them via a smartphone device.
4. Biggest Hurdle to Embrace Mobile is Limited Time and Resources: It’s not surprising that time and resource limitations prevent small businesses from entertaining new solutions to market themselves. The survey revealed that 64% of small business owners are also acting as their one-person marketing team. This puts pressure on the small business owner to wear multiple hats and find the time to build a mobile presence besides running other aspects of their business.
5. 64% of Small Businesses Will Spend More on Mobile Marketing This Year – 2012 might be the year when mobile-savvy small businesses increase their spend on mobile marketing initiatives. 64% of small business owners surveyed expressed an intention to increase their mobile investments this year, with only 33% indicating that their mobile spend this year will remain the same as last year.

The full survey results can be downloaded here, and Web.com produced the following infographic using the results:

According to a report over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the New York Times asserted that its sources confirm a major transition of talent from Apple to Facebook.

The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.

The reason for the talent acquisition, according to the rumor mill, is due to Facebook’s lingering desire to build a Facebook-branded smartphone.

Rumors of such a product development first surfaced well over two years ago.

“One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he had met with Mark Zuckerberg,” the report reads, “who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said.”

So is Facebook finally poised to join the smartphone space? If so, the development could be a game changer both for the industry and for investors as FB continues to struggle following its Wall Street debut.

Evo.

It’s one of the few HTC/Sprint product lines to make a splash in the mobile ocean, and after a brief stay at U.S. customs, the latest iteration should do the same.

The Evo 4G LTE is the most powerful Evo to date, with a 4.7-inch 720p display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and 1GB of RAM under the hood. But these specs are in no way novel, which means that quite a bit comes down to HTC’s software offerings and design language.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is running the show on this puppy, with HTC’s now-usual 25GB of free Dropbox storage and Beats Audio integration also in tow. The former two are excellent features to have and should be considered when you’re weighing your various mobile options, but I can’t honestly say that the Beats Audio makes much of a difference.

In the design department, there’s quite a bit going on. The front of the phone looks like any standard Android phone that’s come out in the past six months: a large touchscreen, three capacitive buttons within a black bezel, and black edges with rounded corners. In short, the Evo 4G LTE face is nothing to write home about, though I am impressed with the way that HTC managed to squeeze a 4.7-inch display onto a comfortably compact body.

The back of the phone tells a different story. It’s a bit like a mullet — business up front, party in the back.

You’ll find a really nice soft-touch black finish along the bottom two-thirds of the phone’s backside, divided with a bright red, metallic-y kickstand, and finished up top with shiny plastic. The plastic grabs prints like that’s its sole purpose in this world, but the overall aesthetic is quite nice, and the soft-touch finish along the bottom is pleasant as can be.

I haven’t noticed any glaring issues in performance and battery life seems to be pretty good, but we can’t be certain of anything until I complete official testing. In other words, stay tuned for our full review which will go live this week.

Speaking in confidence to Reuters, two unnamed sources confirm that the daily deals giant is now actively testing in the field a new mobile payments platform with a select few Groupon merchants.

Groupon’s nascent payment service comes with an Apple iPod Touch, and a case that wraps around the back of the device, which allows merchants to swipe credit cards, the people said. They did not want to be identified because the service has not been officially announced, and is in an early testing phase with some Groupon merchants.

If the offering successfully makes it out of testing with the company’s blessing for national launch, the service will likely be competitively priced and perhaps significantly undercut the transaction fees charged by Intuit and Square.

Would you be inclined to use a Groupon-branded mobile payments service?

There’s one sub-section of mobile design that never seems to get enough exposure – App Store icon design. It seems to have developed into its own art form, with immensely talented icon designers finding more and more clever ways to showcase the app in a small square space.

I can’t say it enough – never underestimate the importance of a great app icon. It’s the first thing a user sees before downloading your app (I’ve downloaded apps in the past solely on the icon making the app seem interesting).

Agencies never seem to make decent ones for their clients. It’s really easy – 1) Put £500-800 of your budget aside, 2) Contact one of the guys below 3) Get your gorgeous app icon made.

You can watch a great video of one of the designers making a icon here. Or if you fancy making your own, here’s a handy iOS icon PSD template that resizes and exports using actions.

Update: Many people have asked what these icons would look like at 57×57 and 114×114, check out http://iicns.com/ to toggle between sizes

Here are my favourites:

By Ramotion

By Roman Jusdado

By Konstantin Datz

By Konstantin Datz

By Konstantin Datz

By Aditya Nugraha Putra

By Saturized

By Konstantin Datz

By Dash

By Ryan Ford

By Roman Jusdado

By Artem Borysenko

By Ryan Ford

By Mario Bieh

By Konstantin Datz

By David Im

By Roman Jusdado

By Oleg Sheremet

By Erfan Nuriyev

By Umar Irshad

By Dash

By Erfan Nuriyev

By SoftFacade

I’m always on the look out for great interactions and saw this experiment by one of the designers on Dribbble and thought it was worth sharing, especially as it inspired other to use folding concepts in their designs after it was posted:

By ididi

by Anton Kudin

by Johan Rundberg

Google’s innovation lab have started building the technology behind the glasses seen in the video. I really hope they pull this off because it looks amazing.

Nokia did a similar video in 2009, interesting to see the difference in execution and vision.