Great news for Canadian BlackBerry fans! The newly unveiled BlackBerry Z10 smartphone is now available for purchase at major carriers across the North American country.

In its home land the BlackBerry Z10 is priced rather boldly against popular smartphones from Apple and Samsung. On a three-year agreement at Bell, the device goes for CAD139.95, while the Samsung-made Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III run for CAD149.95 and CAD49.95, respectively. By comparison the Apple-made iPhone 5 is available from CAD179.95 for the 16GB variant, with the price increasing by CAD100 and CAD200 for the 32GB and 64GB variants, respectively.

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Coming from Android or iOS, Windows Phone 8 is an eye-opening smartphone operating system. It sets the bar pretty high when it comes to looks and performance -- the design is simply beautiful and refreshing, and the software responsive and fluid -- but it never really manages to outshine its main rivals. After living with the HTC Windows Phone 8X for a while, I can't help but notice glaring oversights in an otherwise solid proposition. The package is not complete.

You see, being pretty and going fast does not cut it among the fierce world of Android and iOS. Microsoft needs to take a good look around and take charge by solving the shortcomings of Windows Phone 8. Fact is, it's easy to pick faults with the immature app selection, like many journalists do, but that's more of a chicken and egg problem. What the software giant has to do is build on the current platform by offering better basic functionality, functionality that's necessary for a greater user experience.

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It was bound to happen at one point or another. Following the rolling out of web profiles in early November, Instagram now allows users to skip smartphones and go straight to the browser for all their filtered picture feed needs.

This latest development is part of a plan to bring Instagram to a larger variety of devices, including PCs and tablets, a move that will undoubtedly help support the social network's growth and popularity among a bigger crowd. Instagrammers only have to visit the popular social network's website, press the log in button and enter their account information to start using Instagram inside a browser, without any encumbrance.

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It’s certainly one way to make sure your app store attracts a decent number of apps -- offer developers something that money can’t buy (except possibly later on through eBay). BlackBerry -- formerly RIM -- has produced a limited edition red BlackBerry Z10 for those developers who created "quality" third party apps for the new BB10 platform prior to launch.

There will be just 12,000 units of the new device made, and BlackBerry estimates those developers who qualify for one (and who must also have a BlackBerry Dev Alpha A or B testing device), will receive their handsets in 6-8 weeks. The company will email successful developers and explain how to trade a Dev Alpha unit for the new device.

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On Tuesday, Huawei unveiled a new smartphone running Windows Phone 8 aimed at the "rapidly-growing" African market. Dubbed 4Afrika, the device is based on the Ascend W1 unveiled at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, and is marketed as an "affordable option" for developers, first-time smartphone buyers, small businesses and students.

The 4Afrika is part of larger initiative which, by 2016, plans to deliver tens of millions of modern mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) into "the hands of African youth". The initiative also intends to bring one million small and medium local enterprises online, and help 200,000 locals succeed in entrepreneurship and employability.

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That sound you hear: Emerging markets sucking the margins out of iPhone. Gartner predicts that Chinese brand and white-box handset manufacturers will dramatically change the smartphone market's course this year. Android is likely to be the big beneficiary, while iPhone has the most to lose. Economies of scale will bite Apple, which benefits from one of the tightest supply chains anywhere. Chipset integration, for example, will allow handset makers to ship cheaper devices that are good enough, even if less than market leaders.

"The combination of competitive pricing pressure, open-channel market growth and feature elimination/integration will very soon result in the $50 smartphone", Mark Hung, Gartner research director, says. "Semiconductor vendors that serve the mobile handset market must have a product strategy to address the low-cost smartphone platform, with $50 as a target in 2013". That's right, 50 bucks, not the $650 Apple charges carriers.

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On Monday, the United Kingdom arm of the global telecommunications company Vodafone revealed that, starting February 6, it will carry a Windows Phone 8 smartphone lineup. In merely two days, Vodafone UK customers will have access to five devices sporting Microsoft's new mobile operating system.

The UK carrier covers the market from top to bottom, with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the HTC Windows Phone 8X taking the role of the flagship Windows Phone 8 smartphones. The former ships in black and yellow, while the latter comes in California Blue or black.

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In the camera department, Windows Phone 8 is an interesting piece of kit -- users have access to a high number of customizable options and there is even support for add-ons, or lenses, as Microsoft likes to call them. But one major feature is still missing to nail that perfect picture, namely burst-shot mode.

The software giant's research arm, Microsoft Research, has introduced a new app for Windows Phone 8 devices, dubbed Blink, that fills the gap in the otherwise competent camera bag. Blink works both as an individual app as well as a lens, and allows users to snap a significant number of shots, all in one go, and save the best one afterwards.

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Some days the sorry state of news reporting really baffles me. Today I read numerous headlines claiming that Android tablet share surged past 50 percent in Q4, usurping iPad -- all using numbers I wrote about a day earlier. The one on CNN -- "IDC says Android is the new king of tablet market share" -- got to me. Immediate reaction: "What did I miss?" But in looking over the numbers, nothing really jumped out that IDC said any such thing. Sure iPad shipment share fell to 43.6 percent from 51.7 percent annually and from 46.4 percent sequentially. I chose to ask the analysts rather than follow the feeding frenzy.

"Android actually passed the 50 percent mark in 3Q 12", Tom Mainelli, IDC research director for tablets, says. Whoa, there's no new king at all. Android took the crown last summer. Still, that's a phenomenal achievement, setting me to write a story I couldn't imagine a year ago.

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I would think that the long-anticipated BB10 platform would excite the stock market. Rather, shares of the company formerly known as Research in Motion and still listed as RIMM are down more than 26 percent from Monday's open. BlackBerry (new company name) is up about 1 percent in late-mornong trading today, but it's tiny respite from a beating that started before Wednesday's big new product reveal.

I haven't seen BlackBerry 10 up close, or the new Q10 and Z10 smartphones, but "impressed" is apt description, nevertheless. Would I switch, though, from Nexus 4 and Android? Probably not, and that is RIMM's problem -- too many people like me -- and perhaps what has legitimate investors (not pesky shortsellers) antsy. BlackBerry market share has fallen too far against Android and iOS, which, according to IDC, had 92.1 percent combined market share in fourth quarter. Once a leader, BlackBerry fights to be the far-behind third smartphone platform.

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The HTC Windows Phone 8X is a smartphone that you will either love or not want to touch even with a 10 foot pole. Part of the arguments for and against it stem from the operating system of choice, Microsoft's latest (and greatest) Windows Phone iteration. Sure, the device has good build quality and the software is fluid and responsive, but the app selection is currently lacking compared to rivals like Android and iOS. So where does one draw the line between success and failure?

I've been using the Windows Phone 8X for almost two weeks and the early impressions are still on the positive side. In my initial review I touched on a number of points that I found revealing for my brief time with it, but the real test is how the Windows Phone 8X fares over a longer period of time. My main and initial gripes concern the limited app selection and general usability issues of Windows Phone 8 when coming from the stock flavor of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The real question is this: Is it good enough?

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Apple's stock price tanked more than 12 percent the day after announcing fiscal 2013 first quarter earnings. Nine days later, shares are still down about 10 percent, in part because Q2 guidance came in below analyst consensus. The guidance, in particular, seems to have spooked investors as Apple announced its intentions to provide a realistic guidance, as compared to the usual "sandbagging". The company also warned of lower margins -- between 37.5 percent and 38.5 percent. In that context, let's look at the average selling price movement chart and benchmark our previous iPad Mini cannibalization estimate.

The shipment chart above clearly shows that iPhone growth has slowed during the current product cycle, thanks to market saturation. This should give Apple even more incentive to launch a cheaper iPhone. In contrast, the iPad has seen reasonably strong growth, but as I predicted, iPad Mini cannibalization seems to have pushed Q1 shipments below market expectations.

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EE (formerly Everything Everywhere) was created by the merger of the T-Mobile and Orange businesses in 2010, becoming the UK’s largest mobile network operator in the process. It’s also currently the only provider offering 4G LTE connectivity in the UK, and has just expanded its 4G data service to cover an additional nine towns and cities.

This expansion means 4G EE is now available in a total 27 UK locations, making it -- according to EE at least -- accessible to nearly half of the UK’s population.

"As the first operator to bring 4G to the UK, it is important that we make it accessible to as much of the population as possible, as quickly as possible," Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE said, regarding the expansion. "To be ahead of schedule and covering approximately 45 percent of the population within just 90 days of the launch is a great achievement for our network team."

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Today, the company formally known as Research in Motion, unveiled the BlackBerry 10 platform, and first two supporting devices -- the touchscreen Z10 and physical keyboard-packing Q10. The new products are quite literally a corporate relaunch, which includes ditching moniker RIM for BlackBerry.

While the Z10 and Q10 are officially launched, BlackBerry provides little information on the keyboard phone, while plenty on the other. The screen is smaller (3.1 inches versus 4.1 inches) and the battery is larger (but BlackBerry doesn't say by how much). So for today, I'll stick with what we know something about, and that's the Z10.

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If you're one of the many jilted Windows Phone 7.5 users, your day has come. Version 7.8 is rolling out to Nokia phones as I write. "Notifications will begin to appear for Nokia Lumia 510, 610, 710, 800 and 900 owners with an unlocked phone or operator approved software during February", company spokesperson Boc Ly says. "Simply connect your phone to your computer via Zune for PC, or the Windows Phone app for Mac, and follow the onscreen instructions".

The update is long overdue, and in many ways unsatisfactory. For example, Nokia Lumia 900 debuted on U.S. carriers in March 2011. Three months later, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8 with a bombshell: None of the current devices would support the OS. None. Those phones would get Windows 7.8, which lacks many of the features that make 8 great, by comparison. In the annals of dumb product development moves, I have to rank this one highly. Loyal customers rush to a new platform only to be dissed for it -- and people wonder about Windows Phone's slow start?

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