ReadWriteWeb

RIM's BlackBerry platform is still the most popular mobile smartphone platform in the US, but Google's Android was the big winner in the last quarter of 2009. According to comScore, Android's share of the US mobile market more than doubled from 2.5% in September 2009 to 5.2% in December. While the Nexus One might not be a bestseller just yet, it's clear that the Android platform is poised for rapid growth in the next few months as more and more manufactures continue to release Android-based phones.

We are still in the early days of location-based apps, but according to new data from Skyhook, there are now over 6,000 location-based iPhone apps, 900 Android apps and 300 BlackBerry apps. Skyhook, the company that allows non-GPS enabled devices to triangulate locations by using nearby WiFi signals, also found that only a small number of these location-based apps are currently available across the three major app stores. There are currently only 43 cross-platform location apps.

Seesmic just launched a new version of its Android app, which, among other things, now offers support for multiple Twitter accounts and cross-posting from different accounts. The Seesmic team also worked hard on polishing the app's user interface and added a number of minor new features like extra large font in the app and the ability to change your Twitter password from within the app. Seesmic for Android now also remembers your scroll position in the timeline.

Just a few days after releasing Firefox for the Nokia N900 handset, Mozilla just announced that it is also making good progress on an Android version of Firefox. According to Firefox developer Vladimir Vukićević, development of Android for Firefox is progressing quickly. While there are no plans for the release of an official alpha version just yet, Vukićević has already managed to compile and install an early version of Firefox for Android.

Do you use WordPress and want to blog from your Android phone? Doing that just got a lot easier. Wordpress for Android - an open-source app backed by WordPress.org - is now available in the Android Market. With this app, anybody who blogs on WordPress.com or a self-hosted WordPress blog can post and edit blog posts, as well as moderate and post comments. In addition, the app will display notifications whenever a reader comments on a blog post.

Do you want to take control of your Android phone? By "rooting" your device, a process similar to jailbreaking an iPhone, you can install custom ROMs (images), which add stability and speed improvements to Google's mobile operating system, as well as install new features developed by the hacker community themselves. The procedure involves running commands that enable total access to the device. For non-developer types, hacks like these sound scary, but by following the instructions below, you can take control of your Android phone in only a matter of minutes. The end result is a truly open device which you can modify to your heart's content.

HipLogic is a new real-time, web-based platform intended as an alternative user interface for some mobile phones. Launching today, this free download currently delivers applications like Facebook, news, and Twitter to both Windows Mobile and Symbian devices with plans to offer an Android version of their software sometime in the future. Although both Microsoft and Nokia have their own mobile application stores, Hiplogic claims to provide a better, "more iPhone-like" experience than what's currently available.

Have we reached app store saturation yet? Apparently not. PC manufacturer Acer has just announced plans to launch its own application store designed for all the operating systems is supports, including Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Google's Android platform and Google Chrome. The new store will launch mid-year for the first three platforms listed, with apps for Chrome set to launch later on. Although no exact time frame was given, the Chrome apps are likely to appear by the third or fourth quarter of 2010 to coincide with the debut of Acer's line of Chrome OS netbooks, a group that will account for 10% of Acer's ultra-portable PCs.

Echoecho is a location-based mobile application that wants to make it easier for you to locate your friends, family members and colleagues in the real world. Echoecho only tries to get you to answer one straightforward question: Where are you? Unlike other location-based application, echoecho doesn't force you to constantly broadcast your own location. Instead, the application takes the opposite route. Instead of telling people where you are, you ask others where they are. You could use echoecho to check where your children are, for example, or simply to meet up with your friend without having to give a long and complicated description of where exactly they can find you.

While we recently reported that Google's Nexus One had a slow start coming out of the gate, the Android operating system, which is spread across a number of devices, is not having the same issues. A report by Myxer, a mobile entertainment company with over 30 million members, says that visits to its mobile site by Android users grew 350% in 2009, strongly outpacing the iPhone, which grew 170% during the same period.

While the iPhone is clearly the media darling of mobile devices in the US, there's no denying that Nokia's handsets have saturated the global market. As part of that global strategy, the company just announced free walk and drive navigation for 74 countries in 46 languages. Today's release of the third iteration of Ovi Maps is similar to Google's maps for Android in that the service offers free turn-by-turn voice guidance. Nevertheless, there's one important catch - maps are cached offline for future use. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Nokia's VP of product and location, Christof Hellmis, for a look at how the company is saving device owners precious battery life.

According to new data from ChangeWave Research, both usage and consumer sentiment towards Google's mobile operating system Android has increased over the past several months. As of December 2009, the research firm's survey shows that 4% of all smartphone owners now use a phone running some version of the Android OS. That's an increase of 200% since the previous survey released in September.

Google is trying to come just one step closer to answering any question you might have before you even ask it. This time around, the increasingly omniscient search engine will now cater its search suggestion list on Android-powered devices and iPhones according to your location.

The search suggestion list is that set of terms that appears below the text entry field on Google, made famous by often listing the things we only think - or type into Google.

According to Mplayit CEO Michael Powers, the size of a mobile platform's app store is now mostly irrelevant. Facebook-based mobile app store Mplayit took a close look at the most popular apps for Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone and found that the most popular apps on all three platforms tend to be very similar. As the popular app stores continue to grow, users on all the major platforms also drift towards the same known brands and hits like EverNote and Pandora.

Less than a week ago, Google introduced its own Android phone, the Nexus One. Over the weekend, we got a chance to take the phone through its paces and while we aren't quite ready to give up our iPhone yet, the Nexus One is a formidable challenger. Apple will clearly have to step up its game with the next iPhone if it wants to hold off Android's momentum. In terms of features, the Nexus One is already on par with the iPhone platform and beats it in many areas. When it comes to the overall user experience, the iPhone is still a step ahead of the Android platform, but that could easily change in the near future.

AT&T has announced a new line of Android-based smartphones for 2010. Dell, HTC and Motorola will make the five new devices, which are scheduled to be released during the first half of 2010.

Endgadget is predicting that AT&T will be using the Motorola Backflip, while Slashgear has confirmed that the Mini 3i will be the choice for Dell. The other three, Endgadget says, will most likely go to HTC.

Google is holding a press event to showcase the new Nexus One and possibly some other mobile innovations today. We already know quite a few details about the phone itself, but hopefully Google will also have a few surprises up its sleeve. The press conference should get under way at 10 a.m. PST and we will live blog the event here.

For more details about the launch of the Nexus One, see our live blog of Google's press event.

Later today, Google plans to unveil its own smartphone, the Nexus One. According to new data from research firm Forrerster's new U.S. Omnibus Survey, Google is launching this phone at just the right time. Today, 17% of U.S. adult who subscribe to a cell phone plan use smartphones. This number is up from 11% in 2008 and 7% in 2007. Thanks to the growing importance of Android, Forrester thinks that 2010 will be "the year of the smartphone."

The Android platform has grown exponentially since mid-2009, but December's stats show a particular factor that might help catapult the platform to greater heights of user adoption.

In figures just released from mobile advertising company AdMob, the Droid singlehandedly boosted calls to their network by nearly 300 million requests while stats for HTC Magic devices remained static and those for HTC's Dream model actually decreased. In terms of consumer use of the network and acceleration of device popularity, it seems we have a winner.

Just over a year ago, we were excited to report on a new website for programmers. StackOverflow was the brainchild of coders/rockstars Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and it was a social Q&A channel that promised to give programmers solutions for even the most obscure bugs.

Apparently, that approach to developer support was a solid one. These days, the site gets around 1.8 million unique visitors a month and has served as a prototype for white-label Q&A sites for companies, too. The site's latest merit badge is an official nod from the Android team, which has announced StackOverflow as the official home of Android developer Q&A support.