Within minutes of Google launching its Nexus One smartphone today (January 5), analysts and reviewers at the launch commented that the Nexus One appeared to be aimed mainly at increasing Google's share of the mobile search market.

Who's calling the shots in the highly competitive contests between mobile operators? It appears the winners will be the ones who do the best at attracting the biggest manufacturers, writes Christopher Backeberg...

No likely winner has emerged yet in the Apple-Google dispute over Google Voice. There appear to be only losers so far, writes Christopher Backeberg, and they are the American iPhone users...

Intel and Nokia have formed a strategic alliance to develop a new class of mobile computing device based on Intel architecture and chipsets. The partnership aims to produce devices combining the performance of powerful computers, the high bandwidth of mobile broadband and ubiqitous Internet connectivity.

Mobile companies have yet to recognise the potential of phones as navigation devices - although many mobile phones are now GPS-enabled, this doesn't necessarily make them effective at navigation, according to Jonathan Raper, professor of Geographic Information Science at London's City University.

Around this time last year I was researching the ‘Navigation & Location Europe’ conference and I was speaking to lots of LBS application developers who were telling me one thing: They wanted more support from mobile operators. This essentially came down to two points – with the lack of GPS enabled phones on the market they wanted easy and unrestricted access to Cell ID information. But, moreover, they wanted much greater help from operators when it came to promoting and getting their applications to market.

I came across some really interesting news today as huge silicon valley venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has set up a $100 million ‘iFund’ to invest in companies building applications for the iPhone.

Nokia is preparing its response to Apple's iPhone with a device currently codenamed 'tube'. It will support Java and I'm guessing (with Nokia's current commitment to mobile navigation and location) it will include GPS. Vice President of Forum Nokia, Tom Libretto, also provided an entertaining quip and dig at Apple... In reference to Apple having shipped 5 million to 6 million iPhones since launch, Libretto responded "We've done that since dinner on Friday." Nice!