The global smartphone market of 2014 could see Android in second place with a 25 percent share, followed by BlackBerry, Apple, and Windows Mobile, according to IDC's new "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker."

Less than one year ago, most of my clients were requesting iPhone app design.  Today they are still asking for iPhone app design but many also say, “Do you do Android, too?”  Most of them plan to start with one platform, see how things go, and then decide whether to invest in the second platform.  This roll-out strategy is often tied into engineering costs.  Since few developers possess the coding skills required for each platform—Objective C for iPhone and Java for Android—it’s often necessary to hire two development teams. But what about design?

One of the most commonly cited problems facing Windows Phone 7 is that it’s a paid mobile operating system competing with Android, a free and proven alternative. Microsoft absolutely must make Windows Phone 7 a success if it wants to stay relevant in the growing mobile sector, but how do you compete with free?

According to Microsoft, there’s actually a lot of good advantages to pay for Windows Phone 7, though… and it all comes down to transparency.

In late 2009, when Microsoft introduced a downloadable application for the iPhone from Apple, it set off some excitement in the tech world. For years, Microsoft and Apple had been head-to-head in the war for personal computing.

Carriers and handset makers are rallying to make it cheaper and easier to deliver applications on phones using the "official" brand of Java on mobile.

A report from hotspot locator WeFi will be released this week showing key metrics in mobile data consumption across platforms. Laptops and netbooks go through a lot of data over Wi-Fi hotspots, as you’d expect, but the report suggests smartphone owners are using hotspots instead of 3G in increasing numbers. With the recent surge in WiFi-enabled smartphones, WeFi’s report shows an uptick in smartphone data consumption, much of it by users on the Android platform. However, the data is limited by the absence of a major player in the smartphone arena.

Months ago, Google promised a mini-computer running the Chrome operating system would hit the market by the 2010 holiday season, and the Download Squad may have uncovered new details about the device. It will supposedly be a tablet with 2 GB of RAM and 3G abilities. However, Google's other OS, Android, is the one with the app momentum, and both are under the cloud of Oracle's litigation.