When it comes to United States smartphone sales, Apple is clearly king controlling a record 53 % of US smartphone market.

Looking at the bigger picture of all handset sales (feature and smartphone combined), Apple has solidly kept in second place ever since the release of the iPhone 4S– until now. A new report suggests that LG has taken the 2nd place spot, knocking Apple to third overall.

The report released by Hong Kong’s Counterpoint Research on Sunday said that LG had captured 13 % of the U.S. phone market sales last month, while Apple recorded only 12 %. Both LG and Apple are trailing big time however to longtime leader Samsung with a 33 % share of the market in December.

So what’s going on to push LG over Apple overall? While their feature phone marketshare probably hasn’t changed a whole lot,  LG just recently had announced 1 millions Optimus G units sold worldwide, and that coupled with sales of the Nexus 4 added to the rise in total sales last month.

Still, holding 3rd place in all feature/smartphone sales in the United States is pretty impressive for Apple nonetheless, when you consider that Apple only sells smartphones. What do you think of this market leader change, does it surprise you or not?

[ source ]

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The LG Optimus Vu will certainly bring a visual treat to your eyes all thanks to the 5-inch IPS display (1024×768) that features a bright 4:3 aspect ratio. The Vu is thinner (measures in at 8.5 mm) than the Galaxy Note, and the rectangular tablet features a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, an 8MP rear camera and a 1.3MP front shooter.

NFC, and is LTE enabled, and 32GB of built-in storage is more than enough for a lot for pictures, videos, and apps. But there’s no indication about an SD or microSD card slot anywhere in the press release. Other features include HDMI and DLNA, and it will come with LG’S “Rubberdium pen” (also known as a “stylus”).

But the disappointment is that the device runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. They have promised an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich within three months of launch.  The Galaxy Note has a 2,500mAh battery, which should provide a longer run time than the Vu’s 2,080 mAh battery. That might be an advantage for the Note, since those looking to take advantage of LTE will be sucking alot of juice.

No hints about when the device will arrive in the US. Meanwhile, we will take a closer look at the device at the upcoming MWC.

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Bearing in mind that this is quite different from the LG Optimus 2X (confusing, I know), the Optimus 2 is an entry-level Android smartphone with entry-level features and specs. Presumably, it will also get an entry-level price tag like its LGOO predecessor.

The budget minded device has a 800MHz single-core processor to go along with its 3.2-inch 320×480 display, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 179MB of internal storage (that’s it?!?), a 3.2-megapixel camera, and a bundled 2GB microSD card. If you want more storage, you can upgrade that microSD to 32GB… though I suspect the new memory card might cost more than your new phone!

I’d expect to see this phone go for close to free on contract with a range of carriers later this year, though LG hasn’t officially confirmed its release details just yet.

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Space or speed? I guess you don’t really need to choose anymore, so long as price is no object. For instance, you can take a look at the new Optimus solid state drive from Smart Modular Technologies. This “Enterprise Grade” drive uses a native Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface for up to 6Gb/s. The kicker? You can get up to 1.6TB of usable capacity and it will cost a small fortune.

Smart Modular is saying that this drive is both the highest capacity and the fastest SAS multi-level cell (MLC) solid state drive on the market. You want fast? It has read/write speeds of up to 100K/50K random IOPS and up to 500MB/s sustained transfer rates for both read and write. What more could you ask for? That’s space and speed in one.

If you don’t need the full 1.6TB, they’re also planning on doing 200GB, 400GB, and 800GB variants, all of which are said to offer the same blazing fast speeds. You can imagine what it’d be like if you plunked these into your favorite notebook. The scary part is that they left out the price on the press release. Based on how SSD prices are going, you probably know why the price wasn’t there.

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The promotional video is relatively short at just 23 seconds, but it pretty much confirms the design for the LG Optimus 3D that we saw last week. One difference, and it could be just because of the renders and lighting, is that there might be a chrome bezel around the front that isn’t quite so obvious in the earlier leaked photo.

In line with all the previous rumors, you get a glasses-free 3D display and a couple of cameras in the back to shoot pictures and videos in 3D too. The overall design isn’t a huge departure from the other Optimus phones, so we’re not expecting much in terms of surprises.

I’m not completely on board with this idea just yet, but maybe they’ll convince me when they do the official unveiling at MWC later this month.

[PocketLint]

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Don’t adjust your monitors, you read that right. Apart from being the world’s first dual-core Android phone, this particular handset also may very well bring nVidia’s Tegra 2 into the smartphone arena. Though the phone is rumored to be codenamed ‘Star’, the final name (and many other things) of the phone are still undecided. The back cover of the phone spots a mammoth Google logo. What this means is that most probably, the phone shall have an untouched representation of the Android OS (though the version is still unknown). The phone also has a front camera and a 1500 mAH battery. The main camera is 8 MP capable of video recording at 1080p. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Source: Engadget

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LG Optimus Android 2.2 devices launched

Why announce a single device when you can announce a whole new brand with a complete new lineup of devices? Apparently, that’s the strategy that LG is taking with its new Optimus series.  The main feature of this line is that they will all be powered by Google Android 2.2 froyo, at least for now. Optimus devices include both high-end and entry-level Android devices, so the latter will likely be left out of future upgrades to Gingerbread.

The LG Optimus One has rounder edges and comes with an OMAP3630 processor, 3.8-inch touchscreen, an “HD” camera, and HDMI/DLNA support. The LG Optimus Chic, on the other hand, is more budget-minded in its approach, though they’re not completely forthcoming with the exact specs.

An Android tablet of some kind will also be included among the ten (or so) devices that LG plans to launch under the Optimus banner during the second half of this year. Can LG dethrone HTC and Motorola as the Android leaders? With Optimus, it just might prime.

[BGR and Gizmodo]

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