Android has strengthened its leading position as the most popular smartphone platform on Millennial Media’s mobile ad network, according to the company’s January Mobile Mix report. For January, Google’s mobile OS captured 54 percent of all ad impressions seen on smartphone platforms on the network, up from 46 percent in December. At the same time, …

Will HTC continue to make Windows Phone 7 handsets? Yes, according to chief executive Peter Chou. He was asked the question on stage during a Mobile World Congress panel session this afternoon. It’s not a silly question to ask, given Microsoft’s recent buddy-buddy act with Nokia, and more importantly, the promise that Nokia’s engineers will be working with their Microsoft …

BARCELONA, Spain–Verizon Communications Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone would love to see a third player in the mobile OS market, but Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform may not be it. Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone. Verizon Wireless Melone said during an interview yesterday at the Mobile World Congress here, that it is important for the mobile industry to have more than …

You’re stuck in a cross-town taxi. An important meeting is just getting under way at the office. What do you do? What do you do? You can dial in, of course, but then you’ll be missing out on all the visuals: slide decks, spreadsheets, and so on. Solution: fire up Join.me, a universal application that lets you connect to remote …

Qualcomm announced this week that future Android devices running Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform will have support for streaming television shows and movies through Netflix. The on-demand service has long been a desired feature for phones and tablets. Currently, the only Netflix option for Android users is to watch through Google TV. According to a press release issued yesterday, the holdup was …

App store GetJar plans to “aggressively expand” its software for Android devices with at least part of a new $25 million funding round. GetJar, which started its app shop in 2005, touts itself as the world’s largest open app store and the second largest app store behind Apple’s. GetJar boasts more than 1.5 billion downloads to date for multiple mobile …

The second day of Mobile World Congress has come to a close, and while it’s a little slower than the last few days, there was still plenty to see in Barcelona. The big news of the day was from HTC, which introduced several new phones including the so-called “Facebook phones”–the HTC ChaCha and the HTC Salsa–which apparently might have Android …

We could scarcely believe our eyes when we read in HTC’s press release last night that both the HTC Salsa and ChaCha “Facebook phones” will run Android 2.4, Gingerbread’s successor. Android 2.4? That at first seemed unlikely given several factors–the fact that Android developers are just starting to roll out Gingerbread 2.3 phones at this show and elsewhere, the fact …

Executives from the some of the world’s largest wireless operators participated in a keynote event at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona. Stephen Shankland/CNET BARCELONA, Spain–The recession is over and wireless operators are finally growing again, but they are warning regulators in Europe, Latin America, and the United States to keep their paws off. CEOs from some of the largest …

China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou cautions against carriers becoming "dumb pipes," WAC is central to that effort. Stephen Shankland/CNET Nokia and Microsoft want to create a “third ecosystem” to rival the mobile phone realms built by Apple and Google–but carriers have an even broader alternative of their own. Last year at the Mobile World Congress show, a group of them …