Canonical introduces the Ubuntu tablet interface, which will compete with Android, iOS, and Windows with its own take on multitasking and advanced security features. The launch is the next step in Canonical's quest to unify phones, tablets, PCs, and TVs.

Samsung has done a very good job selling its brand of Google's Android phones. And apparently Google has paid attention: It is bringing over the guy who headed up Samsung's marketing to do the same job at its Motorola unit.

Samsung has made no secret of the fact that it provides a number of the key components inside Apple's flagship iPhone and iPad devices, even while actively competing against them with its own Galaxy line of Android competitors. A major change in that relationship has now been reported out of Korea, however, where the Chosun Ilbo says Samsung has increased the price of manufacturing Apple's application processor by nearly 20%.

Tablets remain popular with consumers, and continue to grow at a healthy rate -- and it's not just Apple that owns the market any more. New figures from market-research firm IDC show two competitors finally emerging from the string of Android failures to grow at an even faster rate than Apple.

MIPS Technologies, Ingenic Semiconductor and Karbonn Mobiles have jointly announced availability in India of the world's lowest-cost Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean' tablet.

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.

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.

NXP Semiconductors has announced that the newly launched Nexus 7 will feature its PN65 NFC solution to provide an amazing mobile user experience. Featuring an NFC radio controller and an embedded Secure Element, the PN65 is validated and integrated on the latest release of Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.

Samsung Electronics' new CEO called for the company to redouble its focus on software, which could hint at a move away from Android and toward its own proprietary operating system.

ARM has announced the launch of the ARM Mali-450 MP GPU, doubling the performance of the successful family of Utgard architecture-based graphics products. This includes the Mali-400 MP GPU that can currently be found in a wide range of mainstream products, including smart-TVs, as well as Android-based smartphones and tablets.

The designs ARM produces have been licensed and used to build processors at the heart of many of today's bestselling gadgets.

According to seperate reports, both Panasonic and Samsung could be looking to use Android as the base operating system on digital cameras in the future.

STMicroelectronics has secured the business of Apple, supplying MEMS for its iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, as well as the business of Sony. InvenSense, however, has about 70% market share for Google Android-based smartphones.

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.

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.

Gold's skepticism arises from the lack of backwards software compatibility on the platform and said the danger is that if the market doesn't quickly take up Windows on ARM, Microsoft will stop spending resources on it, as has been the case with other platforms beforehand.

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.