The research firm reported that during the first quarter of the year, Android sold about 28 percent of its units in the US, Research in Motion’s Blackberry sold about 36 percent, while Apple’s iPhone only sold 21 percent of its units in the US market.

These figures reported by the NPD are only from self-reported consumer surveys and do not include the devices’ sales.

An analyst from the NPD, Ross Rubin, said the strong growth of Android’s sales was because the software was made available throughout the US, particularly through the Verizon Wireless.

“The wireless carriers in the U.S. are still the king makers in the mobile market,” said the analyst. “Verizon in particular is what is making the Android so successful right now with its promotions and marketing.”

The strong sales of RIM’s Blackberry Curve, HTC Droid Eris and MKotorola Droid have helped keep the smartphone’s sales equal to AT&T during the year’s first quarter.

There is now doubt that Apple’s iPhone is quite popular, but findings of NPD suggest that its sales could increase in the US market if it was available on most carrier networks.

“If the iPhone was available today on Verizon, Apple would certainly grow market share,” he said.

“But it’s harder to say what will happen in the long term. It’s difficult to know what the feature-set will look like on phones in a year. But it’s clear the iPhone still has enough cachet today to pick up market share.”

The Finnish company claimed that the breaches involve technology employed to boost data and speech transmission, as well as antenna advancements for compact gadgets.

The suit is the newest in a series of legal battle between the two firms.

Apple and Nokia are caught in another row that involves Apple’s iPhone.

Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at the Finnish company, said, ”We’ve taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation”.

Nokia said in a statement that it has spent around $5.1bn ((£34bn) in R&D and has accumulated 11,000 patents for the previous two decades.

Nokia last year filed a similar case against Apple over claims that its patents had been infringed by Apple products. Apple responded by filing a countersuit against Nokia, claiming that its smartphones had violated Apple patents.

Apple, meanwhile, is also caught up in another legal battle with the Taiwanese company, HTC – developer of Google’s Nexus One phone, which it said has violated patented technology.

The media said patent rows are widespread in the technology industry and usually conclude with some form of licensing deal.

The lawsuit filed by Nokia came on the day of Apple’s announcement of the release of iPad. The tablet computer will be offered for sale in nine nations outside the United States on 28 May.

Despite the efforts, the official application of Twitter for Android may not be able to convince people to switch from Seesmic or Twidroid, despite its having a good start.

Among the biggest features of the application is the sync option with the contacts list of a phone. It works on two ways: allowing calls from the Twitter application or accessing profiles in Twitter from the phone’s contacts lists.

This option is important as it shows the social networking information’s usability within a personal gadget. This social media and personal content merge is fast becoming a convenient way to keep in touch with your friends and manage your phone. There are more Twitter integration with devices of Android to look out for as Google’s Twitter API is set to open to third-party developers.

The social site has also taken the challenge of creating an easily-navigated service – a thing that Twitter has had problems with since it opened. A home screen provides large icons to access trending topics, profile, mentions, DMs and lists. You can jump to this screen from any page in the application, making it convenient to perform necessary functions.

Available from www.google.com, Google revealed that in an effort to improve current standards for viewing images on the iPhone, new software would allow for users to not only search for pictures quicker but to view them in higher quality. Accessible on the Android 2.1 software and iPhone 3.0+ platforms, images can be viewed as square thumbnails so that more pictures are accessible per page, whilst users can slide left and right through pages allowing broader scope for individuals to browse at a faster pace.

Meanwhile, whilst functions such as tapping an image to make it full size remain, an alternate black background increases the “emphasis” of pictures allowing for better viewing. And with the application easily available on Google’s main website, they expressed that the software was available in 38 languages for universal use adding “whether you like to look through pictures of prom dresses, impressionist paintings or 猫　ジャンプ we hope you love this update to Image Search for mobile.”

The move marks continued steps by Google to remain dominant in its internet presence whilst making a concerted effort to apply its innovative approach to Apple’s forwarding thinking products. And with Apple’s speculated iPhone update only around the corner, Google’s latest offering may be seen by many as an attempt to prepare for the imminent iPhone onslaught.

With the iPad and the next version of the iconic iPhone currently at the centre of much worldwide hype, Apple revealed that in the first three months the number of iPhones sold equalled 8.75 million whilst Mac units saw an incredible sale increase which led to the companies best, out-of-holiday quarter ever. And though there has been some criticisms regarding Apple’s tablet PC offering, it hasn’t dampened profit levels which came in at $3.07bn.

Meanwhile, whilst a growing global market was attributed for the incredible growth of Apple’s iPhone, the company remarked that iPod sales had fallen slightly. However, with 10.89 million units still being sold, and 2.9 million Macs sold in the three month period, Apple has more than a little to be happy about.

The news come amidst a continuing media buzz of both iPad and iPhone news. With profits being so strong, they are only likely to gain further ground when the international launch of the iPad, now slated for the end of May, comes into force in addition to the speculated release of Apple’s 4G iPhone.

Whilst Opera have been waiting for three weeks for Apple to approve such a download, the wait seems to have worked after over a million individuals downloaded the free application which will provide a new browsing system. And whilst it isn’t the first alternative browsing application to come to the iPhone, which individuals generally use with Apple’s own Safari programme, it is the most well known.

Ian Fogg, Forrester analyst, explained “It is probably the first well known PC browser to become available on the iPhone. There’s no Firefox, no Internet Explorer – and there’s not likely to be because of the development environment. An app has to be written especially for a particular phone to offer a high quality experience. On many mobiles the browser provided with the phone is the only choice someone has.”

Speaking of their new mini Opera browsing system, Opera revealed that though a separate piece of software hasn’t been created for the iPad, the new application should work on all Apple devices. Discussing the reasons behind the positive mobile market move Opera’s chief development officer, Chirsten Krogh, explained “The web is still a place to make big bucks. Online ads are lucrative and that’s growing on mobiles. The mobile ecosystem is becoming more like the web system.”

The possibility of such a move by Twitter has been highly speculated after the success of Tweetie on Apple’s iconic mobile phone. After announcing that they had acquired Atebits, the creator of Tweetie, earlier this month, Twitter have now made the move to having an official application on the world famous iPhone, bringing their software to millions in more than a third-party capacity.

Loren Brichter, an Atebits developer who contributed to the building of the Tweetie application revealed on his personal blog that, post joining Twitter’s official mobile team, he was now in the midst of developing an official Tweetie application for Apple’s iPad. Meanwhile Twitter revealed that Tweetie will be renamed as the Twitter for iPhone in addition to becoming a free download.

Elsewhere, the market began to speculate over the future for third party developers of applications for Twitter. Including Echofan, Twitterific and Tweetdeck a number of industry insiders have speculated that Twitter may make a move to acquire all such parties in a bid to increase their global official reach. Chris Dixon, co-founder of Hunch, meanwhile commented “Wow, weird coincidence! A Twitter board member blogged about killing twitter apps the same week Twitter released/bought 2 clients.”

In a radical change to the current software processes that can currently be applied to the iconic mobile phone, the latest update will allow users more control over the organisation of their home screen. By holding a finger on an item long enough to make is “jiggle”, folders will be automatically created and named, enabling individual’s better access to multitudes of applications whilst keeping their system tidy.

Meanwhile Apple also revealed that the iPhone’s mail box feature will be updated to allow customers to register more than one email account. Essentially allowing a user to access all their mail in one place, individual accounts will be easily accessed be delving into communications, whilst on the surface, data will be easily visible for quick and easy checking.

Elsewhere, following its success on the new iPad, Apple revealed that iBookstore is to come to their iPhone, allowing millions of users to access iBooks. In addition to coming with a free Winner the Pooh novel, formats will be mutually recognisable across Apple products allowing for books purchased on iPads to be read on iPhones and vice versa.

After a number of groups including the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, both of whom offer paid for and free news apps, criticised the move by the BBC, its governing body, the BBC Trust, said that it would delay the release after “representations from industry” highlighted possible competition issues. Focussing on the business case of the new services, the trust will ascertain whether the apps are an entirely new BBC offering or a further extension of services which are already in place, with the latter allowing for the launch to continue. However, if the trust finds that that iPhone apps do not fall within the existing services offered by the BBC then a longer, public value test will have to be conducted.

First showcased at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the BBC’s new iPhone news app allows for phone access to video, correspondent blogs and written stories lifted from the BBC website. Meanwhile the sport application will bring consumers live feeds and sports content such as the World Cup. “We are focussed on making BBC Online’s core web propositions more user-friendly, convenient and accessible, and using existing content to create truly distinctive products around our core public service areas,” explained a BBC spokesperson

Responding to claims that they had taken it upon themselves to remove the programmes Apple said that they had acted after customer complaints were received. Senior vice president of product marketing for the firm, Phil Schiller, said “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.” However, when questioned over the process of deciding which applications were purged Mr Schiller admitted that “well known” firms had remained.

It has caused outrage to many developers, with Australian company ChilliFresh angry that their ‘Wobble’ software was banned. Advertised as being able to wobble a picture of women’s breasts, developer Jon Atherton said “I’m now worried the eco-system is run by puritans and is not fair to all players. And worst of all it is not a secure source of income. It can drop to close to zero if they decide to change the rules. On Friday evening we got an e-mail out of the blue which basically said, thanks very much but we don’t want you any more. Apple said it was removing all overtly sexual apps,” he added saying that their daily revenue had now dropped from £320 per day to just £5.