Sony's just-announced PlayStation Phone - hot to trot?

Apple devotees tout the ubiquity of iOS-enabled iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, pointing out that because Apple’s App Store and SDK (software developers’ kit) came first, it now owns the market and like an 800-pound gorilla it gets to sit wherever it wants.

Perhaps rightly, Droid fans point out that (unlike Apple’s heavily-censored, walled-garden-where-we-skim-30%-off-your-receipts-and-don’t-let-you-tinker-with-the-firmware) Google’s open-source mobile OS will eventually dominate the market because it epitomizes freedom of development.

It’s like the old hot-rodder’s joke: Q. What happens when you put a Ford motor in a Chevy and a Chevy motor in a Ford? A. They both go faster. (more…)

I’m not prescient. Honest.

But the futuristic notion of mobile-based payment – which seemed a vague rumbling just a few short days ago is now ballooning into the bona fide mobile-IT strategy trend of 2011:

First Google’s Eric Schmidt hints that the search-and-services giant will be “all about mobile” in ’11.

Then came today’s thumper: Apple may launch a mobile payment system for iPhone and iPad later this year based on a technology called “near-field communication” (NFC), according to a consultancy quoted in Bloomberg News … (more…)