Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 99.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011, nearly double from 55.4 million units a year ago.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Nokia is targeting those feature phone users who haven't yet made the move to a smartphone with the new Nokia Astound. It will be available April 6 through T-Mobile USA for $79.99 after rebate and with a two-year service agreement and qualifying voice and data plan.

A report from Strategy Analytics shows that Apple dominated the smartphone revenue stakes for 2010, followed by Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM).

In the short term, this deal certainly favors Nokia. The company will still be spending money on Symbian development-the company is expecting to ship 150 million of the handsets in the next couple of years-but will be able to scale back this expenditure, as its operating system development costs are increasingly pushed onto Redmond. This, plus the cash infusion, gives the company instant savings.

If true, this report confirms the February statement of Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who said Microsoft has paid Nokia an "incredible" amount of money for the smartphone deal.

The solution is really simple. What if they aim at a different target? What if Apple and Google aim at the youth marketplace, and Nokia and Microsoft aim at the older adult space? This has not been tried yet.

Any payouts or incentives to continue MeeGo development emphasize that Nokia's eggs are not all in Microsoft's basket when it comes to smartphones-or other devices, for that matter. MeeGo is an open-source platform that can power handsets, tablets, and netbooks, which may be why Nokia isn't letting go of MeeGo just yet.

China's Huawei has won a preliminary injunction that blocks technology giant Motorola from transferring particular mobile phone networking technology to Nokia Siemens in a $1.2 billion deal that's been percolating for the better part of a year.

Losing the deal to Google could have landed a fatal blow to Microsoft's chances in the mobile market.

RIM should be able to draw new customers as wireless operators shift their promotions and marketing support away from Nokia while it develops phones that use Microsoft's software, Jim Suva, a Citigroup analyst, wrote.

A group of nine Nokia shareholders has published "Nokia Plan B", a manifesto "to challenge the company's strategy and partnership with Microsoft".

Nokia said Friday it will establish a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft, adopting Windows Phone as its main smartphone platform.

Nokia may announce as soon as Friday a partnership with Microsoft or Google to adopt a new operating system.

"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable," said CEO Steven Elop in an internal email.

Huawei Technologies Co., China's largest telecommunications equipment maker, won a court order barring Motorola Solutions Inc. from disclosing confidential information about Huawei's technology to Nokia Siemens Networks, which plans to buy Motorola's wireless networks business.

In a sign of the rapid shift away from non-smartphones, Apple has recently become the number-one provider of mobile phones, finally surpassing the Finnish giant Nokia as "feature phones" fall out of fashion.

The struggling Finnish mobile-phone giant has abruptly canceled the U.S. launch of a smartphone that was slated to launch exclusively this year with AT&T, people familiar with the situation said. The unexpected cancellation leaves Nokia further behind in its effort to correct a major strategic weakness -- its poor showing in the lucrative U.S. market, where it lags behind Apple, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and phones powered by Google's Android software.

Nokia will terminate its free service of music downloads for mobile phones, Ovi Music Unlimited, in the UK and 26 other countries. The service allows Nokia mobile phones' customers to download unlimited music for free. By the end of the year, the service will be discontinued in all but six countries.

Analysis was sparked by a Morgan Stanley survey suggesting that Nokia could have sold 2.5 million N8 smartphones during Q410, and 9 million in 2011. The survey included 150 handset retailers in 5 countries across Europe.