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Panasonic smartphone is yet to be named.

The company announced that it will launch the smartphone in Europe in 2012. The Android phone will launch in March, and will head to the United States and Asia afterwards.

The company also has plans for its near future in the smartphone business, aiming to sell 16 million units in the year to March 2006, with 5 million of those sold abroad.

"We are well aware of our powerful competitors," said Toshinori Hoshi, head of the company's mobile communications unit. "However, market shares are changing dramatically and if we launch into this fast-changing market, we believe we have a chance of a hit."

Panasonic is aiming for a very small chunk of the market, which IDC predicts will grow to 472 million units in 2011, an increase of 55 percent. By 2015, IDC sees the growth at 982 million units.

Panasonic's new handset features a 4.3-inch OLED screen, and is aimed at business users aged 30 and up.

HP has said today that it will be donating its webOS software to the open source community, just 20 months after purchasing Palm and webOS for $1.2 billion.

The company says it will remain active in the development and support of the operating system and hope that adding community support will certainly help the software survive for new generations of hardware.

Says the press release:

webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.

The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform
HP will be an active participant and investor in the project
Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation
Software will be provided as a pure open source project
HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

According to some great research from Asymco, it appears that every Apple employee makes Apple $278 per hour in revenue.

Each store made $481,000 revenue per employee in 2010, up from $388,000 in 2009.

The average revenue per store visit is $45, and Apple had 250 million visits last year.

Asymco says there are 1 employee for every 10,000 annual visits.

Each employee is estimated to work "360 hours per quarter, so the average employee sees 6 visitors per hour or one every 10 minutes. As that visitor generates more than $45 of revenue, an Apple store employee creates sales at the rate of about $278/hour."

Earlier in the year, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) took down the popular hip-hop music blog Dajaz1.com, claiming it was a "rogue site" and guilty of copyright infringement.

The domain seizure was notable because the owner came out in full force defending the blog, even sending the New York Times emails that document how most of the "infringing" tracks made it to his site - they had been sent directly to him by artists and labels looking for some underground promotion.

This week, ICE has apologized for the seizure, and returned the domain to its owner. ICE says "the government concluded that the appropriate and just result was to decline to pursue judicial forfeiture," according to Ars.

A lawyer for the site says it was almost impossible to get the domain back, as the government had sealed the files, blocking anyone from seeing how they were receiving extensions on the forfeiture deadline, which expired months ago.

Despite the domain being returned, the RIAA continues to say that the owner of the site "specialized in the massive unauthorized distribution of pre-release music. Dajaz1 profited from its reputation for providing links to pre-release copies, and during that time nearly 2,300 recordings linked to the site were removed from various file-sharing services."

Last week, Nintendo announced that its 3DS Circle Pad Pro would require a AAA battery, much to the dismay of gamers.

This week however, those concerns have mainly been put to bed, as it appears the peripheral will work for 480 hours of gameplay on one single battery, giving most casual gamers a year or so before they need to go out an replace the battery, which can cost as low as $1 for a 2-pack.

The peripheral launches tomorrow along with the release of Monster Hunter 3G in Japan, says 1up.

First rumored in the summer, the company introduced the Circle Pad in September.

A few other games that can use the control system are Resident Evil: Revelations and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D.

The peripheral will likely cost $19.99 when it hits the EU and NA markets.

The consensus amongst Wall Street's research analysts is that Apple will hit 30 million iPhones sold in the fourth quarter of 2011, surpassing their previous record amount by a gigantic leap.

Previous high estimates were at 28 million but demand for the 4S has been unprecedented.

AT&T recently said they expected to have their best smartphone quarter ever, as well, thanks to iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S sales.

The 3GS is the first iPhone to sell for $0 (with contract), making it very popular with users who want an iPhone but may not be able to pay the upfront fees for the newer devices.

A few of the notable Apple analysts to raise forecasts are Sterne Agee's Shaw Wu and Ticonderoga Securities' Brian White, who says his checks of the company's suppliers has shown huge growth and demand was higher than ever.

Nintendo has said this week that thanks to a partnership with Boingo, the company is expanding its free Wi-Fi hotspots for 3DS handheld users to 42 U.S airports.

Using the handheld, owners can use the hotspots to play online games, browse and purchase from the 3DS eStore and watch online videos.

The hotspots also give access to the Nintendo Zone, a virtual service that gives gamers coupons and promotional offers.

"With the holiday season approaching, more leisure travelers and families with children will fill our airports and have access to our hotspots," says Colby Goff, senior vice president of strategy and business development for Boingo Wireless (Sutra). "Our state-of-the-art networks will provide Nintendo 3DS users with seamless connectivity and fast, reliable service to help them make the most of their travel downtime."

Citing trusted sources, BGR is reporting that Samsung is working on an 11.6-inch tablet for launch at the Mobile World Congress in February.

The tablet will have a powerful dual-core Cortex A15 Exynos 5250 CPU clocked at 2GHz and a massive 2560x1600 16:10 resolution.

Additionally, the device will have a smaller bezel to compensate for the extra size of the screen.

The 11.6 (probably not the name) will run on Android 4.0, include NFC Beam and have an optional HDTV dock.

For now this is rumor but the tablet will certainly be one of the most powerful if it launches when expected.

Here is today's list of 10 cent apps from the Android Market.

On Tuesday, the Android Market started an excellent promotion, offering 10 days of 10 popular apps for 10 cents.

Android's promotion is in celebration of 10 billion apps being downloaded from the market.

List, available now from here or via your Android phone/tablet:

Spirit HD
Shazam Encore
Sentinel 3: Homeworld
Farm Frenzy
Toddler Spanish
Need for Speed Shift
Jelly Defense
Game Dev Story
Baseball Superstars 2011
My Beach HD

In the span of less than a week Samsung managed to win two major victories in their international patent war with Apple.

Last week a US judge rejected Apple's request for a preliminary injunction banning sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Meanwhile the injunction Apple was granted in Australia was being reviewed to determine whether it should be reversed.

Today that review was completed, resulting in another temporary victory for Samsung. They ban was overturned and Samsung will be allowed to sell their tablets in Australia immediately.

A Samsung spokesman told The Sydney Morning Herald it would not be until some time next week that consumers could get their hands on the tablets, but "certain channels" will be accepting pre-sales immediately.

This is not the end of either case. Both will be going to trial at some point, and while the tablets in question will likely be replaced by newer models before final judgements are rendered, that still leaves the possibility of monetary damages.

Troubled smartphone maker RIM has decided to rename the next version of their mobile OS BlackBerry 10.

The company had previously announced the OS, which merges features from their smartphone and tablet platforms, would be called BBX. Unfortunately for RIM, that name had been in use for many years by a company called BASIS International.

BASIS makes development tools for creating code to run on a variety of platforms, including several mobile operating systems. They said this had already caused confusion for their customers, several of which had asked them if there was an affiliation with the new BlackBerry OS.

The suit went further, alleging (via CRN):

In addition to the inevitable confusion created by RIM's use of the mark BBX for related goods, customers and prospective customers are also likely to wrongly believe that software applications created using Basis' development tools are only compatible with RIM's BBX operating system, thus impairing and destroying Basis' reputation for providing software development tools for cross-platform development

It's no surprise Warner Music Group was up for sale recently. They have just released their first annual financial statement since being sold back in May.

The recording industry has fading quickly in recent years and WMG's fiscal 2011 report doesn't show any signs that's changing. They reported a loss of $205 million.

To put the scale of this loss into perspective, in the fourth quarter alone WMG lost $103 million. This is 124% of their loss in the same quarter last year.

This may also explain why CEO Edgar Bronfman stepped down from that position earlier this year. Of course, in a move you would expect in an industry this clueless, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors, putting him in charge of developing a strategy for the future.

After the wonderful job he did as CEO, what could possibly go wrong?

If one good thing has come out of the introduction of the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the US, it's the way opposition to both has led those in the tech industry to organize and take action on an unprecedented scale.

Some established companies, including Google and Facebook, have made decisive public statements. At the same time, law professors and entrepeneurs have sent messages directly to Washington.

Now a coalition of entrepeneurs, venture capitalists, and people who advise startups has emerged. Calling themselves EngineAdvocacy, they are dedicated to getting the public involved in efforts to promote an environment where technology, both on the web and in other places, can be used to drive economic growth.

A blog entry announcing the launch of their new website reads:

We?re very excited to see our plans for Engine come to fruition - creating a platform for communication between one of the fastest growing and valuable industries and the decision makers in government is something we are very passionate about. We?re launching our full website today and we want the site to be a collaborative space to engage on issues of importance to the tech industry - like our opposition to the controversial anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, which you can read more about on our site.

PersonalWeb, a company based in Tyler, Texas, has filed patent infringement suits against a number of large tech companies, including Google, Amazon, VMWare, and NEC.

The company's location is notable only because Tyler, Texas has a reputation as the most friendly court in the US for patent lawsuits.

PersonalWeb is notably different from the typical company setting up an office in the East Texas town. In most cases those companies are non-practicing entities, more commonly referred to as patent trolls, who exist only to sue and produce no products of any kind.

While PersonalWeb has followed a path familiar to patent trolls in buying up patent portfolios from other companies, those patents are used in actual products, including StudyPods, an educational social networking platform currently deployed in Tyler, and an anti-piracy product called Global File System.

In fact, in their statement announcing the lawsuits PersonalWeb makes a point of mentioning both those products, begging the question of whether their sole purpose is to create a facade of legitimacy as a real tech company instead of a patent troll.

Microsoft has unveiled the Windows 8 Windows Store, where developers can sell apps.

Starting in February, devs can sell apps for a minimum $1.49 up to $1000.

Like other app stores Microsoft will take 30 percent revenue, but if your app is popular and brings over $25,000, the cut is reduced to 20 percent.

In-app transactions have the same split, if they use Microsoft's billing system.

Windows Store developer accounts cost $49.

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