The BlackBerry Storm, which will go on sale later this year, is competing with Apple’s iPhone 3G and T-Mobile’s G1. 

You just can’t keep a secret in the tech industry these days. Early pictures of T-Mobile’s Google phone leaked onto the Web the week before its Sept. 23 launch, and now images are surfacing online of another eagerly awaited device: a new handheld from Research in Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry Storm. RIM hasn’t officially launched the new device yet — and it declined to comment on the leak — but the Storm is clearly a direct assault on Apple’siPhone 3G and T-Mobile’s G1. It’s also an attempt to wow consumers with both a jazzy new design and an App Center filled with games and other add-on programs.

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With a new phone, a new mobile service, new software and a new online store to deal with, Apple certainly has its hands full. But its handling of the App Store has been a little puzzling. The company has approved more than 1,000 applications for sale, but at least three of them have vanished after a short period of availability. Their developers aren’t sure why.

Over the course of its existence — and particularly since the successful launches of the Macbook, the iPod and the iPhone — Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has developed a reputation for its streamlined design ethos and user-friendly interfaces.

A stylish product that’s easy to use is just part of the equation, however. A problem-free launch of a product is perhaps almost as important to a its success as its actual quality. continue

Apple hasn’t shown much interest in putting Flash on the iPhone, but Adobe is still pursuing the project.

During a recent conference call with industry analysts, Adobe was asked for a progress update on the project to bring support for its Web-based multimedia system to Apple’s smartphone.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Instinct, Sprint Nextel Corp’s answer to the iPhone, will sell for $130 after rebate, Sprint said on Wednesday. Sprint, which has been suffering from steep customer losses, has said it will spend more than $100 million to market the touch-screen Instinct, made by Samsung Electronics, in hopes the cellphone can help turn around its fortunes.

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CEO Steve Jobs unveils the much-anticipated 3G iPhone; cuts the iPhone price to $200; takes aim at the BlackBerry.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Apple announced on Monday a much faster iPhone that’s half the price of the current model.

The news is expected to address one of the biggest complaints about the hugely popular iPhone: That its network is too slow. CEO Steve Jobs said the new iPhone, which is based on 3G technology, is 36% faster than top rival Nokia’s N95 smartphone.

As Fortune.com first reported, the new 8-gigabyte iPhone will cost $199 and a 16-gigabyte version will cost $299. Jobs says the new iPhone will be available worldwide starting July 11. It will allow up to six hours of Web browsing and five hours of talk time.

Jobs announced the 3G iPhone, which had been rumored for months, at the company’s annual World Wide Developers conference in San Francisco.

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Struggling search engine almost copies Guardian Unlimited style

Google must have had some feedback about its dull and horribly weak-looking new favicon, which is no doubt appearing in a browser tab very near you. The Official google Blog has put up a not-very-spirited defense. This points out that they hadn’t changed it in 8.5 years — yeah, that’s a really good reason for making something worse.

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An anonymous wit scratched those lines on the side of a junked car door and lugged it to a trail near my home in Northern California. The middle of a pristine, ancient redwood grove is the wrong place to find a rusted-out car door, but the words magically transformed the thing from an aggravating piece of junk into art. I Googled the quote as soon as I got home, of course, but found nothing. (Thanks to Google, we live in a world where “I don’t know” has become an unacceptable response. So my inability to identify the author there is driving me crazy.)

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It’s pretty much a given that the next iPhone, expected June 9, will have 3G network capabilities. What’s the next-most important feature the device ought to have? That would be GPS, according to Arik Hesseldahl. The applications and functions that GPS could bring about would open a whole new world for the iPhone.

If there’s anything the iPhone has lacked compared with other phones in its class, it has been high-speed connectivity and the ability to determine its location accurately. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will address the first shortcoming in a matter of days, when it unveils the second version of the year-old iPhone on June 9.

I’m hoping Apple also tackles No. 2 — by including support for Global Positioning System navigation. For one thing, most of the handsets in the iPhone’s peer group contain GPS chips by default. Research In Motion’s (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry devices have included GPS support for a few years now, while Finland’s Nokia (NYSE: NOK) considers GPS so strategically important that last year it spent US$8.1 billion to acquire Chicago’s Navteq, a digital mapmaker that supplies all the major navigation device companies.

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San Francisco, Google kicked off its Google I/O developer’s conference here with an update on several of its Web-related initiatives and a flashy demo of its Android software for mobile devices.

A prototype phone from an unnamed manufacturer was shown running Android software during the keynote. The device featured a touch screen display and a startup screen full of colorful icons for launching programs and Web services, such as Gmail, with the touch of a finger.

A quick flick of the finger from a status bar brings up pending actions like an imminent appointment or unread email.

Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms at Google, said some of the features were shown today publicly for the first time. Google bought Rubin’s company, Android, in 2005. The Android software is the centerpiece of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which aims to create an open source mobile platform for developers.

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Once, Apple was behind ARM - but sold out of it. Now, it’s bought a low-power chip firm. Is this a rift with Intel?

Just weeks after Intel announced its low-power “Atom” chip platform, Apple has surprised, well, everyone by buying PA Semi, a “boutique” fabless chip design company, for $278m (£139m). (Gotta love that word “boutique”: “ooh, that processor looks simply fab on you!)

“Fabless” means PA Semi doesn’t bake its own; it lets other companies do that. It just designs - specifically, low-power chips. Possible uses (which you can be sure Apple will be quizzed on much further this evening, when it reports its quarterly results) look likely to be for the iPhone and iPod lines.

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With profits topping $1bn for the quarter, and computer sales up by 51% in units, only iPod sales weren’t dazzling.

Apple has announced its second quarter results, showing $7.51bn revenues (up 43%) and profits of $1.05bn (up 36%) - compared to $5.26bn and $770m the year-ago quarter.

Sales of Macintosh computers were seriously up - to 2.289m (up 51% units, 54% revenues) while iPod sales grew much more slowly, to 10.64m (1% units, but 6% revenues). And Apple ended the quarter with even more cash, $19.4bn. (Slightly smaller since it bought chipmaker PA Semi.)

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