Nokia board chairman Jorma Ollila said Tuesday that he would leave his post by the year 2012 as expected, but that he would not "throw in the towel" at the world's leading mobile phone maker before then.

The worldwide mobile phone market grew 19.8% on year in the first quarter of 2011 fueled by high smartphone growth, especially in emerging markets, and gains made by market challengers, according to IDC.

Future versions of Motorola's Atrix smartphone-laptop combo will be rolled out as Android "alternatives" to tablets and other newfangled devices, Motorola's chief executive said this week.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest chipmaker, fell the most in six weeks in Milan trading after saying second-quarter sales will be held back by a decline at its joint venture with Ericsson. Dubbed ST- Ericsson, the venture is completing a shift to a new lineup targeting smartphone and tablet markets.

Verizon Wireless will start selling the HTC's Droid Incredible 2 on April 28 while Sprint will put the Nexus S 4G from Google on sale May 8. Both smartphones will sell for US$199.99 with two year service agreements.

Mobile phone maker Nokia has announced it will shed 4,000 jobs as part of a plan to refocus the company on smartphones. Nokia said the majority of the job losses would be in Denmark, Finland and the UK.

Qualcomm reported record quarterly revenues and raised its guidance for 2011 as global demand for smartphones and tablets grew. Supply-chain concerns stemming from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan had not affected Qualcomm's ability to make chips, and it had seen very little impact on demand for its products, the company said.

Nokia, the struggling market leader in mobile phones, has said that it intended to cut costs by nearly 20% over three years, a move that will likely eliminate thousands of jobs as it enters an alliance with Microsoft.

NHN and Daum Communications, operators of South Korea's two largest Internet search sites, said in statements they filed complaints against Google with the country's Fair Trade Commission for blocking local phone carriers and manufacturers from embedding their search applications in devices using the Android operating system.

Apple will start selling a white version of its iPhone 4 in the next few weeks, following a 10-month delay, three people with knowledge of the plans said. The release was stalled as Apple resolved manufacturing challenges including paint that peeled under heat.

Zoom Technologies has signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents.

Intel has designed a handset that may be manufactured by China's ZTE, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The phone, based on a version of Intel's Atom microprocessor, may go on sale in China.

Cisco is shutting down the consumer-oriented Flip camera business that it bought for US$590 million in 2009. The move will mean the loss of 550 jobs worldwide, cost Cisco US$300 million - and disappoint thousands of users who had enjoyed the devices' simplicity.

Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of their nuclear crisis to the highest level, seven. The decision reflects the total release of radiation at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is ongoing, rather than a sudden deterioration.

A Business Insider report cited discussions between Avian Securities and one of Apple's parts manufacturers that suggest we might not see a next generation iPhone until the end of 2011 or even early 2012. And recently, a Japanese-language site, Macotakara.jp, uncovered a report that revealed Apple hasn't yet ordered components for the iPhone 5.

Nokia workers are bracing for what may be the steepest job cuts in almost two decades as the company prepares to start a partnership with Microsoft. A reduction in R&D activities is set to be announced by the end of April, with as many as 6,000 jobs under threat.

Operating profits for the first quarter of 2011 are estimated at KRW2.7-3.1 trillion (US$2.5-2.8 billion), compared to KRW3.01 trillion in the prior quarter and KRW4.41 trillion a year ago.

Rumors, misinformation and speculation are spreading like wildfire across the industry today following recent reports about Android anti-fragmentation efforts and what this means for processor architecture openness. Will Google's anti-fragmentation initiatives for Android code impact providers of microprocessor architectures such as MIPS, Intel and ARM? Does anti-fragmentation mean that Google is standardizing Android for any specific architecture?

What this may mean -- as BMO Capital's Keith Bachman and Jefferies & Co.'s Peter Misek explained to clients Wednesday -- is that for the first time since 2007, summer will come and go without a new iPhone.

Just days after a judge ruled provisionally against a claim before the US International Trade Commission that Apple's handsets, including the iPhone, had violated five of its patents, Nokia shot back with a further case over another five.

By 2015, Windows Phone 7 will power 37 per cent more smartphones than Apple's iPhone, according to the prognosticators at International Data Corporation

iPhone and Android are already flooding past corporate gate keepers, and current BlackBerry users are looking to make the leap to these newer devices. Recent Nielsen surveys show that BlackBerry users covet iPhones and Androids. These new devices are the most desired smartphones for every demographic group that Nielsen studied.

Finnish labor unions are afraid that Nokia's move could cost thousands of jobs since many employees in the company are responsible for developing Symbian-related businesses.

ZTE says it will quadruple the number of smartphones it ships globally to 12 million this year, including its first model for a top-tier wireless provider in the US Huawei, which already provides a smartphone to the smaller prepaid providers, said it is in talks with the four national carriers.

Google has closed availability of the source code to Android 3.0 Honeycomb, explaining that the tablet-oriented software was not ready for use on smartphones and that the company didn't want outside developers or enthusiasts experimenting with it in unauthorized ways.

Motorola Mobility, which has been Google's only major licensee fully committed to Android, is now developing a new web-based OS intended to give it more control over its future, enraging Android advocates anew just weeks after Nokia opted for WP7 platform

Nokia may be moving toward Windows Phone, but with the T-Mobile Astound (C7), it shows that with a few needed upgrades, Symbian can still function as a good entry-level smartphone.