By blanketing every corner of virtually every carrier in the American market, Samsung's mobile division has now laid claim to the rather lofty mark of 150 million handsets sold in the US market since it first set up shop this side of the pond eleven years ago. Though glitzy, marketing-heavy efforts like the Instinct, Glyde, and BlackJack series get the better part of the spotlight, Samsung likely owes almost all of its success to its stunning effectiveness in getting series after series of carrier-customized, low-cost flips into customers' hands at a blistering pace -- a pace that has left competitors like Motorola just a little shellshocked. A company rep is boasting that they'll push another 30 million in total this year, so no rush getting down to the store; if you want a Sammy, odds are they'll have what you're looking for.

[Thanks, fkl]

Call it a hunch, but you shouldn't have to wait too awfully long (like, hours / days / weeks) to secure Nokia's North American E71 today. Said handset is now available at the company's flagship store in Chicago, complete with a QWERTY keyboard and US-friendly 3G. Eager to grab one? Total cost will be $483 (plus tax) in addition to a roundtrip ticket to Chi-town, considering the store won't ship to out-of-towners (or so we hear).

[Via IntoMobile]

Who says we Americans don't love our mobile internet? We don't like paying through the nose for it, but there's no denying we heart it profusely. According to new research from Nielson, around 15.6% of US wireless subscribers utilize mobile internet on their handset, while the UK ganked the silver medallion at 12.9% and Italy the bronze at 11.9%. Out of the 16 countries studied by the firm, America ranked number one in terms of usage, and oddly enough, Motorola's RAZR / RAZR2 were found as the top devices (10%) for accessing the mobile web. For those curious, Apple's iPhone came in second with 4%, while RIM's BlackBerry 8100 and 8800 series claimed 2% each. Even if you're usually not the numbers type, we'd say it's worth your while to give these a peek -- pretty interesting stuff, from a nerd's point of view. [Warning: PDF read link]
[Via modoNews]

You've piddled around in our unboxing shots and replayed that hands-on video countless times. Now, the time has finally come to bust open the piggy bank and secure your very own Nokia N78. Dramatics aside, the HSDPA-packin' handset that also musters a 3.2-megapixel camera and A-GPS can now be purchased at Nokia flagship stores in Chicago and New York, numerous online retailers and the occasional mom 'n pop shop for around $560. So, who's getting one?

It doesn't sound like Qualcomm has all of its legal woes here in America worked out just yet, but apparently that won't stop fat-walleted USers from snapping up the forthcoming HTC Advantage X7510 real soon. Both Dynamism and On The Go Solutions are expecting stock any day now, and they'll be shipping to your US-based address so long as you're willing to accept a $1,299 charge on your preferred piece of plastic. Before you brush this off as absurd, listen to that devil on your shoulder whispering things like "5-inch VGA display" and "HSDPA." Hmm.

[Via Pocketables]
Read - Dynamism
Read - On The Go Solutions

It's been a solid tick since the North American N95, also referred to as the N95-3, received a software update. For those clamoring for a little love from Nokia's dev team, listen up: an administrator over at the outfit's forums has admitted that the Software Update crew has a new version in the works. We're told that they've heard the demands for a fresh release, and they're toiling away in order to bring it to N95-3 owners by early June. Unfortunately, we're not told what new features we can expect, and even worse, "early June" seems like eons away, doesn't it?

[Via Symbian-Guru]

Even though we've seen a couple of US e-tailers offering HTC's latest Advantage, the X7510, up for pre-order, it seems that the handheld won't actually be sold here for at least awhile. According to jkOnTheRun, the X7510 possesses one of those hotly-debated Qualcomm chipsets that cannot be sold on American soil -- presumably due to all those legal issues the firm is currently wading through. Of course, folks that just can't fathom living another quarter without one can cough up the requisite dough to snag one from an importer, but otherwise, it looks like you USers are clean out of luck (at least for the moment).

If we saw the typical "Ships in 1-2 weeks" here or whatever, we wouldn't be sounding an alarm, but something is going on here. Both Apple's US and UK online stores are joining the O2 choir and are now reporting the iPhone as "currently unavailable" -- no 8GB, no 16GB, no nothing. It seems that Apple either significantly underestimated demand for the 2.5G models ahead of the 3G release that's still a few weeks (or months) down the road, or the 3G model is a whole heck of a lot closer than we could've imagined. Is anyone suddenly having a nasty case of "I only want what I can't have" syndrome and regretting that they didn't order one of these bad boys a day or two ago?

[Via GadgetKing, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Despite shockingly strong sales worldwide, Nokia has kept a fairly low profile in the US as of late -- not Sony Ericsson low, but still pretty stealth. Espoo wants to take a bigger bite out of the American pie, though, and as BusinessWeek notes, it pretty much has to play nice with the US megacarriers in order to do that. Historically, that has run counter to Nokia's corporate culture of rampant innovation with a general disregard for carriers' specific needs -- think Ovi, for example -- and that's where the winds of change start to blow. In the States, Nokia has now assigned a whopping 300 product development folks to AT&T and Verizon each, and it turns out that the 6555 is one fruit of that labor; in fact, AT&T specifically requested that the 6555's PTT button be moved to the top, and Nokia complied. That's a whole new level of cooperation that American carriers aren't used to when dealing with the Finnish giant that likes to throw its weight around, and if it keeps up, it sounds like we should start to see plenty more models available on contract in the not-too-distant future.

[Via PHONE Magazine and GadgeTell]

Marketing its wares straight to consumers is old hat for HTC in the Old World, but stateside? Not so much. That's not to say the HTC name is a total unknown in North America; there's been the odd Advantage here and Shift there, but by and large, we yanks know the Taiwanese firm better for its relatively anonymous efforts in the likes of the AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6900, Sprint Touch, and countless other carrier-branded devices. That's about to change, though, with a full-court press of TV, print, outdoor, and online advertising targeted squarely at the US market launching this week. The company's first ad in the campaign is posted to YouTube -- no new products here, sadly, but it's an encouraging sign to see that one of the world's most prolific ODMs and smartphone manufacturers now thinks that the American market is mature enough to be dealt with directly. The announcement of the US-spec Touch Dual was a good start, and now, we look forward to seeing a whole heck of a lot more where that came from. Check the first commercial after the break.

If you thought Samsung's Soul would be content with sitting in Barcelona, you've never had the pleasure of vacationing in Las Vegas. Sure enough, the Soul is following the HTC Touch Dual in making its US debut at CTIA 2008, and it's quite alright if your palms are already beginning to get sweaty. After all, what else would you expect from looking forward to a quad-band / HSDPA 7.2Mbps slider with a 2.2-inch QVGA display, 5-megapixel camera (with QVGA movie mode), Bluetooth 2.0, microSD expansion slot and Magical Touch navigation? Beyond that, the long-awaited miCoach is also making its US debut in the desert, along with a number of other global handsets (F480, F400 and G810). The sad part here is that none of the mobiles are actually slated to go on sale here in America -- yeah, it's a bit depressing to know they're sitting within our borders as we speak and won't be available for purchase, but there's always next year (right?).

Brace yourself, US-based Touch Dual lovers -- the handset that your Japanese / European friends have been taunting you with for months is finally making the trip stateside. Slated to launch "later this quarter" (at Best Buy initially, of all places), the US Touch Dual will come rocking Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, TouchFLO, Office Mobile, Live HTC Home, a 2-megapixel camera, quad-band GSM support and HSDPA connectivity. Sadly, HTC didn't give us the pleasure of knowing a price, but we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more exact details surrounding the release.

Handsets from China's ZTE are nothing new to Canada; in fact, the ZTE-sourced D90 clamshell offered by Telus is a FasTap phone, of all things. We've yet to see any ZTE kit officially released in the US, though, and MetroPCS is about to get things started. The manufacturer has announced that regional carrier MetroPCS will begin offering ZTE equipment designed specifically for the US market starting next month (which we suspect won't be as cool as the WiMax ones being prepared for Sprint) without giving any details about the actual handsets or their specifications. Given nifty MetroPCS devices like the Samsung r410, we think they'd better step up -- another FasTap model, perhaps?

[Via Phone Scoop and RCR]

As long as we continue to not drop dead from the use of cellphones in our daily lives, the move away from landlines seems totally inevitable for obvious reasons: convenience, portability, having a single point of contact, the list goes on. The Center for Disease Control's National Health Interview Survey validates that Americans feel the same way, showing an upward tick in the number of homes that have gone exclusively mobile (a weird survey to be fleshing out such fascinating stats on the wireless industry, but whatevs). Overall, 13.9 percent said they've ditched the landlines, but the real story seems to be in the breakdowns; 28 percent of renters were mobile-only compared to just 6.7 percent of homeowners. The 25 to 29 year old age bracket was the most likely to rely solely on their cellphones, with 18 to 24 coming in second -- probably because they're still living under their old-skool parents' roofs, we'd imagine. Homes under the poverty level were also more likely to go strictly with their mobiles, and finally -- here's the CDC's health tie-in -- mobile folks were far more likely to be binge drinkers, smokers, and lack health insurance, though they were also more likely to work out in their spare hours. Now if you'll excuse us, we've gotta go hit the treadmill.

If we ignore all the nonsensical parts of this Inquirer article, then we see that T-Mobile USA might be about to make an announcement regarding their US 3G offering. According to a rep, the company will be making an announcement on December 6th on the subject, which sounds to us like the Government might have finally shifted off of T-Mobile's turf. That's all the relevant details we have, so set your calendars if 3G networks news announcements are your kinda thang.

[Thanks, Frank P.]