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Nielsen has released their latest smartphone figures for U.S. market this week  and, keeping with trends, Android leads all mobile platforms. With 42.8 percent of the pie, it is easily bests Apple’s 28.3 percent and RIM’s 17.8 percent.   Where is Windows Phone 7 in all of this?  Fourth place with only 6.1 percent of the market.  In terms of handset makers benefiting the most, Nielsen finds that HTC commands 15 percent followed by Motorola (10.4%) and Samsung (10.1%).

Speaking in more broad terms, Nielsen’s research tells us that 44 percent of all mobile subscribers now have smartphones. Looking at recent buyers, those who purchased a new device over the last three months chose smartphones 56 percent of the time.

Nielsen

Samsung has unveiled their latest System-on-chip (SoC) this week, trumpeting the arrival of the Exynos 5250, a dual-core 2GHz chipset.  Expected to be used in high-end tablets, the Samsung chips go into mass production in the second quarter of 2012.  At that rate we might expect to see these in future Galaxy Tabs and other tablets in the second half of the year.  We’d love to see these arrive in smartphones down the road and it wouldn’t surprise us if it actually happens.

As compared to today’s processors, the dual-core Exynos 5250 features 4X graphics performance over current Cortex-A9-based Application Processors.  Additional details include supports for stereoscopic 3D displays and display resolutions of up to WQXGA (2560×1600).

With CES, MWC, and CTIA breathing down our necks we might be able to see concept devices show up over the next few months.

SammyHub

Lenovo is up to something lately. First they announced a few new Android tablets rocking Honeycomb, and now this. This little beauty was just spotted, and it’s being dubbed the LePhone K2. Rocking a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260 processor, 1GB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, a 4.3-inch IPS display, and 8MP camera with 1080p video capture, it’s sure to raise a few eyebrows. The only damper that we can find is that the device runs on Gingerbread (2.3.5, to be exact). Of course, there’s no word on a release date, so Lenovo could very well slap Ice Cream Sandwich on this bad boy before launch. We’ll try to find out some more on this device.

In the meantime, the gallery below should satisfy you for awhile.

Source Engadget

Shopping for loved ones this time of year can be confusing and stressful, especially for those with children of their own. Well, Amazon aims to relieve some of those worries with their Amazon Santa app, available now for Kindle Fire (and iPad) users. It features a kid-friendly catalog, so they can browse over 500,000 family-oriented toys, music, movies, video games, and more, and add items to a wish list. Then parents can review the list, edit it to their hearts’ content, and email it to friends, family members, etc.

The app is free, so fire up your Amazon Appstore and get your children’s wish lists started today! You can check out a bit more on the app in the press release below.

So what do your kids want this holiday season? Let us know in the comments!

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