Intel's latest effort to crack the smartphone market revolves around its new ultra low-power Atom chip code named Medfield and Google's Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" mobile operating system, both of which reportedly appear in a new handset from Motorola that's due to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress later this month.

Apple has filed a suit in San Diego federal court accusing Motorola of breaching its licensing agreement with Qualcomm over a chip used in the iPhone 4S.

Motorola Mobility, the phone maker Google has agreed to buy for US$12.5 billion, swung to an operating loss in the fourth quarter of 2011 due to increased competition in the smartphone market.

Facebook will begin the process of becoming a publicly-listed company this week, valuing the social networking site at between US$75 billion and US$100 billion, reports suggest.

Smartphones are relatively new, but will likely follow the path of more mature electronics industries, in which "you typically see large cross-licensing agreements between the big players because they've all got lots of patents the others are infringing."

Samsung Electronics has revealed plans to provide the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for Galaxy devices. The platform update for Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note will start in the first quarter 2012, and other Galaxy devices will soon follow.