HTC has scrapped plans to produce a large-screen smartphone using Microsoft's operating system because the screen would have had lower resolution than competing models, according to a person familiar with the project.

Just when you thought smartphones couldn't get any bigger, rumor has it that Samsung will put a 6.3-inch OLED display into its Galaxy Note III.

Qualcomm has said that a shortage of its advanced smartphone processors is almost resolved as manufacturing partners including Samsung Electronics boosted production.

Apple shares tumbled more than 6% on December 5, chalking up their biggest single-day loss in four years as fears grow about intensifying competition in the mobile device market.

OmniVision Technologies' fiscal second-quarter profit dropped 50% as high manufacturing costs pressured the chip maker's margins, masking a jump in revenue.

The two companies are expected to ship an estimated 353 million smartphones and hold a combined 47% share of the total smartphone market in 2012. Smartphone suppliers under pressure include Nokia, RIM and HTC, each of which is expected to register steep double-digit year-over-year declines in smartphone unit sales this year.

The company Jolla, which counts four former Nokia engineers and directors among its five founders, presented its new operating system Sailfish in Helsinki and co-founder and chairman of the board Antti Saarnio promised to deliver "the world's best smartphone" by mid-2013.

The company is expected to ship 61.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, said UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois, as reported by the Yonhap News agency. That number would prove a 5% gain over the 58 million estimated shipments for the third quarter.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said that the largest seller of mobile-phone semiconductors can continue to grow earnings in double digits over the next five years.

To further extend its location services, Nokia is launching a maps application for iOS under the HERE brand.

LG Electronics posted an operating profit of KRW220.5 billion(about US$195 million) in the third quarter, rebounding from last year's deficit.

After Motorola Mobility closed its Nanjing R&D office, the Chinese PC maker Lenovo has benefited by taking on a number of the rival firm's bereft staff.

China's low-cost smartphone maker Xiaomi will look to expand its busines beyond the domestic market to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore via online sales, but it will steer clear of producing tablet devices.

Samsung recently raised eyebrows by beefing up its team of Texas-based chip designers, including those whose backgrounds pointed to an interest in chips for server systems. Now one of the most prominent of those recruits has left the South Korean company for Apple.

The US Court of Appeals has overturned a ban on sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus phone, in a blow to Apple in the ongoing battle between the two rivals.

Qualcomm has announced the addition of two new Snapdragon S4 mobile processors: the MSM8225Q and MSM8625Q. Both are members of the Snapdragon S4 Play processor tier, optimized specifically for a broad range of smartphone users seeking faster applications and better user experiences.

Samsung Electronics plans to unveil the latest in its Galaxy line, the S4, at a European technology exhibition in February, according to company officials and local parts suppliers for the technology giant.

TrendForce believes that, for the A6 and A7 chips, Apple will just as likely turn to Globalfoundries and Intel, which currently provides the Core i processors for Apple's notebooks. The ultimate choice will likely narrow down to whose products fits or performs up to Apple's product standards.

Nokia has apologised after it emerged that an advert featuring video footage which appeared to have been filmed with its new flagship smartphone had in fact been created using different equipment.

Samsung Electronics said on Monday it would inspect 250 Chinese companies which make products for the South Korean firm to ensure no labour laws are broken.

Apple and Qualcomm were rebuffed in separate attempts to invest cash with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in a bid to secure exclusive access to smartphone chips, people with knowledge of the matter said.

's share of China's smartphone market almost halved to 10% in the second quarter as buyers waited for the next iPhone model - expected later this year - or switched brands, data from industry research firm IDC showed on Friday.

SamMobile has supposedly acquired leak specifications for the next Nexus smartphone from Samsung codenamed "Superior." Also labeled as the GT-I9260, it will feature a dual-core ARM A9-based SoC clocked at 1.5 GHZ, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot for extra storage, an 8MP rear-facing camera with flash, a 1.9MP front-facing camera with HD video recording, and a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED screen.

In China's booming smartphone market, which is set this year to overtake the United States as the world's largest, a host of little-known local firms are primed with cheap phones to squeeze market share from US giant Apple Inc's iPhone.

Samsung quickly moved to dismiss the idea that it might purchase Research In Motion or license the smartphone maker's new BlackBerry platform.

ARM has announced the second generation of its Mali-series graphics processing units (GPUs), providing a dramatically improved user experience for tablets, smartphones and smart-TVs.

A key battlefield is emerging for suppliers of mobile chips - the low-end smartphone market in developing countries.

It's a little too soon to write off HTC.

One more analyst house, Canalys, has released its numbers on global smartphone sales in Q2, and unlike Strategy Analytics and IDC, it has focused on sales by platforms rather than OEMs. In that light, Google's Android (GOOG) was the clear, all-out winner: in a market that saw 158 million smartphone shipments worldwide, Android accounted for 68% of them, with its 108 million units an increase of 110% over the same period a year ago.

Chinese smartphone manufacturers, not international vendors, are driving growth in the domestic market, resulting in China becoming the top single country market with 27 percent of the 158 million global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2012.

A senior executive at Lenovo dismissed market speculation that the company was interested in buying struggling Finnish cellphone maker Nokia as a "joke."

Beijing-based Xiaomi sells an Android smartphone called the MI-One. When the phone went on sale last fall, Xiaomi received 300,000 preorders in the first 34 hours. Less than a year after launch the company has sold more than 3 million MI-Ones and counting. The phone is hot. Red-hot. Apple hot.

Nokia said on Friday it had agreed to close its Salo plant in Finland after talks with union representatives, and repeated it aims to cut 3,700 jobs in its home country.

The BCM4335 is now sampling to Broadcom's early access customers, with full production expected in the first quarter of 2013.

The deal may hurt Samsung Electronics, which last week said it would start using AuthenTec's technology in new devices. Samsung is unlikely to continue with plans to use AuthenTec under Apple's ownership.