Japanese and South Korean consumers are early adopters of new technologies, and today, nearly 14 percent of all mobile handsets in South Korea support Digital Mobile Broadcast television. This high percentage is just one indicator of the continuing flow of innovation coming from Korean and Japanese handset designers, a trend explored in a new study from ABI Research on the topic of mobile phone research and development initiatives including 4G.

It's finally happening - Worldwide mobile handset shipments are slated to reach a billion units this year with Q3 results totalling almost 255 million - a  7.9 percent increase from last quarter and almost 21 percent higher than a year ago. As expected, China and India represent much of this growth but all is not lost in Europe or the highly developed North American markets either. As early holiday season shopping gets underway, incentive pricing for normal upgraders and premium devices for trend setters continue to drive demand. Samsung pairing with Sony for rebranded Cybershot phones seems to be playing well for both parties.

Telephia drives home the increasing popularity of moible/phone video with some latest figures based on upload statistics from popular sites such as YouTube Facebook and Myspace, saying that over 8 million users are using their phones to capture and share video. Although that represents only 3% of US phone wireless subscribers, it's a massive increase in such activity especially for Motorola RAZR, Nokia 6105 and Motorola E815 users.

Juicecaster 3.0 allows you to post messags, pictures and enjoy social networking directly from your phone or handheld device. Once connected to the JuiceCast network, you can use the MediaBox functionality to maniulate text and rich media and instantly post it to your MySpace, Live Journal and Blogger profiles to name just a few. Juicecaster allows you to capture your life as it happens and share it with your worldwide community of friends. A "lite" version of the products extends WAP based functionality to older phones - all you need is a connection.

Nakama.ca the latest venture from Toronto based Ambient Vector - the brainchild of Sutha Kamal - is  a media and other rich content sharing site for handhelds. Images and other rich content can be easily uploaded and the service even lets you know (via SMS) about successful submits. The free service is compatible with MySpace, Flickr Windows LiveSpaces and other popular photo blogging sites and has familiar social netowrking functions such as tagging ratings and syndication.

Anousheh Ansari, the first woman space tourist is among a handful to ever blog from space - yes, astronauts have been doing it for ages. Ever since boarding her shuttle flight for the ISS in near Earth orbit, Anousheh has been sharing her thoughts and her Space Explorer  Flickr photo stream with the world. Describing everything from the initial take off to making fun of "space fashion" she is at once technical and also a like a child on a wonderous journey. 

Ok, so as predicted, the US largely ignored this event but the rest of the world knows that soccer is king! From the German collaborative mobile blogs and other projects reported by this site and countless others, we knew that World Cup 2006 was as much a testbed for mobile technologies as watching the worlds finest dribble the football ball across the field. Italians led the mobile video field with 6% of users checking out footage followed by the French with 3% with 3G users comprising 14% of all usage.

Almost 13.5 million mobile subscribers downloaded a game onto their handsets in Q2 2006 representing a huge increase in such activity and almost $47 million profit for the companies involved. As expected companies such as Namco and Gameloft ranked among the top. This is great proof that  increasing number of people are using their phones for advanced functions and gives a boost for those creating moblogging products independant of provider and service sites. Developers would now be encouraged to produce commercial grade products for this as yet largely untapped market. Better software and more choices could see moblogging explode.

More details on HTC's Excalibur smartphone. Yes, it's going to be a full QWERTY device running Smartphone OS but unlike the popular Q, it'll feature QUAD band GSM/EDGE with availabe W-Fi and Blluetooth for a truly encompassing always on experience. Release dates as well as carriers and pricing plans are still in the air, but look for something close to the Q or Cingular 2125 - its main competitors.It will be marketed in the US by T-Mobile as the Dash