Mobile World Congress took place this week and aside from a few Microsoft related announcements, the show was all about Android.
As expected, most of the major handset makers introduced new smartphones, with each trying to differentiate from their peers.
Nokia, which gradually lost customers when tastes shifted to high end smartphones from feature phones, is trying to regain lost ground with the Lumia line.
HTC has typically taken the same approach as ZTE with many smartphone models, but this year is a different story.
In light of slowing sales and many models, HTC is refocusing on a single Android line, the HTC One.
Both share similar qualities: Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, Beats Audio technology an 8 megapixel camera with wide f/2.0 aperture, large, high resolution displays and a Qualcomm 1.5 GHz dual core processors.
Its worth noting that the One X outside of the US will use a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip.
And that means its chip cant power many new phones for AT&T as the carrier wants to push its new 4G network.
Nvidia did announce new LTE radio partners this week, so eventually it will be able to offer LTE handsets.
Its also going to release versions for Android tablets and phones, the iPhone, Windows PCs and Macs and its own MicroConsole TV box.
The company already offered OnLive gaming, a cloud based service that offers console quality titles, and now supplements it with a remote Windows 7 solution.
At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, one of the media hits was OnLive Desktop, a service that provisions a Windows 7 desktop environment that includes Microsoft Office 2010 to the iPad over an Internet connection.
Android users will have to wait some more for the Onlive Desktop service and app to come to their tablets and smartphones, which the company promises will happen some time this year.
The free service offers 2 GB of remote storage and access to the Office productivity suite.
And OnLive doesnt guarantee access to the free service; its on an as available basis.
Paid plans bring support for more Windows features and additional storage.
We tested OnLive Desktop on both our Galaxy Tab 7.7 and loaner Asus Transformer Prime and it works well; at least over Wi Fi.
We were able to type and edit a Word document just as well as if we were running Windows directly on a computer.
Last month, cloud gaming pioneer OnLive put its sophisticated technology to a new purpose: running Windows 7 on an iPad.
For those that use Android devices but need occasional access to Windows 7, we recommend giving OnLive Desktop a try.
The OnLive Desktop allows you to combine the touch gestures of a tablet with an on screen Windows keyboard and handwriting recognition.
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Krysta King is a business journalist based in Hobart, Australia. Krysta has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Krysta spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
