With the new year in full swing, electronics firms are finally taking a moment to review their earnings from last year. While many major firms (such as Panasonic) have shown lackluster results, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd sees 2010 as an opportunity to turn up the heat in the cell phone sector.

In an announcement Thursday, the company said that aims to triple smartphone shipments this year to more than 18 million units as the world's second-biggest cellphone maker.

The company's greatest competition comes from homeland rival LG Electronics Inc, which when combined, account for more than 30 percent of the global cellphone market. Even with such impressive numbers backing them, Samsung realizes the growing trend of smartphone demand (as indicated by the demand for iPhones & Google's Nexus One) and plans to shift a majority of its attention there.

Motorola and Verizon are teaming up on their first handset to include "MotoBlur": a feature that syncs in-phone data with posts, messages and photos from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and makes it all viewable from the home screen.

The handset will feature a large 3.1-inch capacitive touch screen with navigation pad, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3.2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi.

Finally, the unit will be once of many units in 2010 to come equipped with the Android operating system which includes Google services such as Search and Gmail, Calendar, Maps with Street View for turn-by-turn directions and Android Market to download additional apps.

Well, only a few days after the official release and it looks like Apple's iPad may find itself in the hot seat legally.

Japanese computer maker Fujitsu Ltd claims that it has already introduced a device called the iPAD back in 2002.

Interestingly, Fujitsu's iPAD boasted such features as a touchscreen and wireless Internet access.

Apple has until the end of the month to file an opposition to Fujitsu's trademark application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This snag could potentially lead to litigation or even result in a cash settlement. Savvy readers may remember that Apple was forced to come to an agreement with Cisco Systems Inc. back in 2007 as Cisco had already been marketing an Internet telephone called, you guessed it, the iPhone.

Just when you think web advertising couldn't get any more converged, Google announces that will now allow advertisers to embed phone numbers into mobile ads so that customers can simply click to call.

The ads will target high-end browser-equipped phones like those running Android or Windows Mobile, and will take into account the user's given location.

For example, should use "Google" restaurants so as to make reservations, your search results will allow for a click to call the nearest location. While the ability to "click to call" is not new, Google said advertisers who participated in the beta trial saw improved click-through rates, and experienced more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls.

With all of the hype surrounding Apple's iPad tablet computer, which is set to be released this April, analysts are predicting that the biggest squeeze may be felt by digital reading devices like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Nobel's Nook.

The reason for this prediction is that the iPad will likely include the free Kindle application, meaning it will allow users to purchase and read ebooks, epapers, and etexts without having to buy the pricey Kindle hardware (which can perform only a fraction of the functions of the iPad).

Surprisingly, with preliminary units of the iPad being tested by the press, several expected features seem to be absent from the hardware. Among these, 3G Support for Verizon, lack of Flash support, and no integrated camera/ web cam (a popular feature among netbooks).