It’s been a week of major profits and the occasional loss in the cellular world, with and Apple both announcing strong Q4 2007 performance and celebrating with a new bevy of for the iPhone (although some are pointing out that their figures for the Jesus phone. Meanwhile, LG celebrated 550,000 European sales of their 5-megapixel-toting Viewty with a new that packs not only the fresh suit but UI improvements too. Sadly not everyone has been celebrating; Palm announced on Wednesday that, by the end of January.

Critics are blaming the frankly uninspiring range of handsets they’ve got on offer, and looking at the- apparently hitting the shelves in April - you can’t really disagree. Biggest industry news, however, was the FCC’s 700MHz wireless spectrum auction with the first round of bidding clocking up $2.4bn. So far bidders identities have been kept secret, so there’s no telling whether Google have opened their wallet or left the open-access Block C to mainstream rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

LG Electronics forges an alliance with Paramount Pictures for joint marketing. Paramount Pictures’ blockbuster movie for early 2008, “Ironman” will feature LGE’s smartphone and mobile TV phone. Ironman and Gwyneth Paltrow will appear on the screen, each holding the mobile TV phone (VX9400) and the smartphone (KS20).  

Based on the smash-hit original comic book, the movie “Ironman” is also arousing a great expectation of success. LG Electronics expects the future depicted in the movie well fits the company’s innovative and cutting-edge mobile technologies and contributes to enhancing the brand image. The mobile phone maker plans to make the whole world appreciate the state-of-the art image of its products through the on-screen marketing.

In freezing cold months, when people want to stay indoors, but still want to enjoy the pleasure of reading, mobile book or mobile book shopping is one of the hottest items among wireless Internet service providers. It has been a couple of years since books first went mobile, but mobile books just began to gain public attention this year as various mobile book contents are flooding the market.KTF takes the lead by launching magazine and comic portals simultaneously. KTF “Show Magazine” offers a dozen publications over mobile network. High-quality images provide the sense of reading a real magazine. Browsing Comics, the comic portal by KTF runs on a Japan-based mobile comic viewer for high readability. Animation and vibration give the unique pleasure of viewing mobile comics.

SK Telecom’s Mobile Book Store offers up-to-date information of new releases as well as bestsellers so that users can search the database and buy books from the nation’s 4 major online book shops (Kyobo, Interpark, Aladin and Yes24) on the mobile phone. LG Telecom is also running Mobile Bookclub, a mobile book shopping service. Taking mobile phone pictures of barcode attached to books at offline bookstores, users can get the information about the book and keep the book in the mobile cart before buying. Using the scan and the number-input system, mobile phones can read the barcode.

LG has launched the KF600 EDGE which is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera and new InteractPad touch screen system. The InteractPad is what they’re calling the lower portion of the display that is touch sensitive. This will allow users to navigate various menus in the handset. The KF600 actually has a slide out keypad, so it’s not fully touch sensitive. It’s equipped with Bluetooth, presumably with an A2DP profile as well. The KF600 is apparently the GSM version of the LG Venus VX8800.There’s no official price linked to it yet but it should be out in certain Asian countries soon. Hopefully India will be one of them. Stay Tuned.

Nova media has released version 5.1 of its iSync phone plug-ins. A free update for users who purchased the software within the past year, Nova’s iSync plug-ins cost 9.95 euros (US$14.65).

The plug-ins enable your Mac to exchange Address Book and iCal information with cell phones that Apple doesn’t support from the factory with Mac OS X v10.4 or v10.5. They extend the number of compatible phones to include 130 additional models from Ben, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. New to this release is support for Nokia’s 3500 Classic, 7900, E51, N82 and N95 8GB cell phones. The plug-ins require Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later, including Leopard.

The LG KE970 Shine has GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900 network. The smart handset LG KE970 Shine looks exquisitely designed, that is complimented with its glamorous exteriors, adding on to the flashy finish of this handset. LG KE970 Shine has reaffirmed its superiority in crafting the most stylish handsets of today. LG KE970 Shine has features include a 2 Mega Pixel, 1600×1200 pixels camera, video, flash, EDGE and Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth cell phone LG KE970 Shine Silver mirrored finish and metal body combine design and function perfectly. Incorporating a mirror LCD screen and encased with the protective and alluring properties of stainless steel, the KE970 has been meticulously designed to leave a lasting impression. LG KE970 Shine phone can become your ideal music companion that is capable of playing music in MP3/AAC++/3GP/MPEG4 file formats. The phone weight has 119 grams. The unlocked mobile phone becomes a conventional mobile phone. The LG KE970 Shine has high-quality 2.2-inch screen can be used as a viewfinder for the handset’s 2 megapixel flash-enabled camera, making this a decent digital snapper. LG KE970 Shine even looks like a proper digital camera from the back. Bluetooth technology allows wireless communication between compatible devices. LG KE970 Shine has talk hands free with a Bluetooth headset or exchange files with another Bluetooth compatible device. The display type is 240 x 320 pixels.

“It’s very clear that Apple, Google and other players are bringing in a lot of new directions,” says company CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Among these is an increasing union of device functions; while Nokia has long made smartphones that perform most of the tasks of the iPhone, such as the Nokia describes Apple as the first credible newcomer to the cellular market in years, a , Apple’s product is a unique combination of this with the easy media playback of an iPod.

More important to Nokia may be the changes Apple and Google are bringing to the cellular market. Whereas US carriers have traditionally reaped most of the revenue from cellphones, and dictated how devices are used, Apple has managed to coerce better data plans out of AT&T, as well as implement that has inspired other companies to challenge old monopolies. In Europe for instance, Nokia has used revenue splitting to get its Ovi download service hosted through Vodafone.  Google’s contribution comes in the form of the, which aims to create a universal platform across phones and carriers that may turn the latter into entities more closely resembling Internet service providers. American carriers involved already include Sprint and T-Mobile, while phone makers include the likes of LG and Motorola — notably however, Nokia has not been invited by Google, despite the fact that the former is the largest handset maker in the world.

The LG Viewty’s unprecedented multimedia capabilities reflect the extensive partnership between LG Electronics and DivX. The LG Viewty enables consumers to easily playback a wide range of DivX files from the PC on the go or output to a TV monitor without converting to another format.

Consumers can also view DivX files from popular online video communities such at ten times the speed of WCDMA through the HSDPA 3.6 high speed internet access capability. DivX is a widely popular digital media format that enables consumers to create, share and play back high-quality video content across an ecosystem of platforms and devices.

The super sleek and stylish LG Viewty is the first in LG’s new line of high technology handsets and boasts a number of ‘world first’ features never seen before on a mobile handset, including 120 fps video recording as well as unique camera functionality such as manual focus, image stabilizer and handwriting recognition that makes editing easy on the Viewty’s 3-inch wide LCD touch screen.

“Our aim is to provide the highest quality images to users of the LG Viewty and have made every effort to ensure cutting-edge technology is applied to meet this vision,” said Skott Ahn, CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “Our partnership with DivX and the Viewty’s support for DivX video is an important feature in creating a state-of-the-art media experience for our consumers.” DivX is working to build a common digital media language that offers real interoperability across products and platforms, and innovative devices like the LG Viewty are an important piece of that ecosystem,” said Kevin Hell, Acting CEO at DivX, Inc. “Our goal is to enable consumers to enjoy their media content on any device or platform, from the PC to the living room and on the go. We’re excited to further our strong relationship with LG in pursuit of that vision.”