As rumored, Nokia and Microsoft today made official their new grand alliance aimed at getting both back into the smartphone race against Goggle and Apple. At the heart of the deal is Nokia adopting Windows Phone 7 as its main smartphone platform after becoming synonymous with the Simian platform.

In her latest presentation on the mobile sector delivered at a Google event today, former Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker again employed a barrage of charts and figures to make the case for exploding opportunity in the space.

A week after its high-toned unveiling at The Guggenheim in New York, The Daily has come back to earth in the appraisal of the broader marketplace. In the hours after News Corp.'s iPad newspaper hit the iTunes App Store, early reviewers had rated it 4.5 out of five stars and posted enthusiastic reviews of the tablet aiming to save the moribund newspaper industry. But with a more representative sampling of 4,475 ratings as of today, The Daily's rating is down to three stars overall, and 2.5 stars for an updated version introduced Tuesday that promises "increased performance and stability" and …

With the Verizon iPhone poised to hit stores on Thursday, reports have emerged that the device will have a substantially redesigned antenna from that of the original version released on AT&T's network last summer. Remember "Antennagate?"

The New York Times reported today that Yahoo will unveil plans for a more personalized mobile platform at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. The app-publishing system would draw on a user's stated preference, and search and social media activity to show the most relevant content to a user.

Ever wonder who the mobile shoppers among us are and what exactly they're doing? A new study by Leo Burnett unit Arc Worldwide attempts to answers those questions and provide tips on how best to reach these consumers and further boost their activity.

Verizon Wireless' announcement last month that it was getting the iPhone after months -- no, years -- of avid speculation and anticipation was a breakthrough; the nation's largest carrier coming together with the iconic Apple device. But with pre-orders for the Verizon iPhone starting today, the jury is still out on whether the operator can really deliver on its promise of connecting calls more reliably than AT&T.

When Google announced yesterday it was adding check-ins to Latitude, its location-based service, the first question that came to mind was "What took so long?" Latitude was launched in 2009, the same year that Foursquare, the company that would go on to popularize the feature for signaling one's location at particular bar, restaurant or other place via mobile device.

The folks at Google and Apple must be snickering. The eWeek report today of Microsoft blaming Yahoo for a mobile "data drain" bug affecting a small number of Windows Phone 7 devices is hardly the kind of publicity either company needs in relation to mobile.