A new mobile device activation report from Good Technology shows that Apple's iPhone and iPad and smartphones based on Google's Android operating system are being adopted by consumers to help with their enterprise work.

Microsoft may end up paying $400 million on marketing alone to launch Windows Phone 7 for the holidays, an analyst has said.

Unlike traditional silicon-based solar cells, the film is composed of metal nanoparticles embedded in a transparent composite matrix, and operates on a different principle. EnSol is now developing the product with help from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Menlo is a prototype mobile device with a capacitive touch screen (4.1-inch diagonal, 800x480) running Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 which incorporates a Bosch BMA150 3-axis accelerometer and Bosch BMP085 digital pressure sensor (barometer)

The numbers paint an interesting picture. Apple now sells 92,000 iPhones a day. For comparison, 160,000 Android devices are being sold each day, 120,000 BlackBerries, 45,000 Windows Mobile devices and 260,000 Symbian handsets. Apple's market share in smartphones could now be down to 14%, from its peak of 17%, where it has been for the previous 3 quarters.

Windows Phone 7 architect Belfiore talks about the Microsoft vision for mobile phones, how some Kin leftovers might or might not make their way into the platform, and what Microsoft has learned from Apple's iPhone 4 and Android's rapid growth. He also addressed how Microsoft might help grow the Zune Marketplace app library so it can compete with the Apple App Store.

An interesting observation by the guys at MobileTechWorld has suggested that computing giant HP will no longer be a Windows Phone 7 launch partner, if slides presented by Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft's WPC 2010 are to be believed.

To its credit, Microsoft recognized that its smartphone platform was headed down the wrong path, and it reversed course to deliver a different platform rather than continuing to build incrementally on the foundation laid by Windows Mobile.

"Although netbooks are small today - maybe 10% of the PC market at most - we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market...," according to company CEO Warren East.