IDC's latest worldwide handheld market report states the second quarter of 2006 saw the worldwide handheld device market experience its tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. Vendors shipped a total of 1.4 million devices, a 26.3% decrease from the same quarter one year ago. For the first half of the year, vendors shipped a total of 2.9 million units, down 21.4% from the 3.7 million units shipped during the first half of 2005.

DigiTimes has a report out that claims Inventec, Palms contracted manufacturer for the 700p, has possibly postponed volume production of the Treo 700p until September. The article also claims the original schedule called for volume production to start at the beginning of the second quarter and cites unspecified software problems for the delay.

The International Herald Tribune has an article up profiling Access. The article gives a general overview of Access' plans post acquiring PalmSource. The article states that PalmSource's current smartphone marketshare is around 4% and that Access views Microsoft as their chief competitor.

Access wants to increase its share of the mobile operating system market to 30 percent by 2010, from the 4 percent it has now as a result of the PalmSource purchase, said Tomihisa Kamada, the company's chief technical officer and co-founder.

"Mobile phones are becoming very complicated devices, and in order to meet customers' requirements, total integrated solutions are becoming very important," Kamada said. "Acquiring PalmSource allows us to do this and also allows us to cover all the important markets - the U.S., Europe, Japan and China. Integration costs for the handset makers are heavy, so if they can go to a one-stop shop they are happy to work with one company."

BlackBorder is a new freeware app that aims to eliminate the white border around some of the latest Palm models. Ever since the Palm OS went color, all Palm OS handhelds and smartphones have a white 2 pixel "border" surrounding the perimeter of the display that is not used by any program. Photo applications and video players still exhibit this border, even when operating in full screen mode. Canuck Software has released this new utility that will turn this border to black on the LifeDrive, Palm TX, Zire 72, and Treo 650.

The web service formerly known as WeSync has been recently relaunched as ClearSync. ClearSync is a web and Palm based service for viewing multiple calendars with the ability to share and sync individual and group schedules over the web.

Palm today announced the election of Bill Coleman, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Cassatt, Corp., to its board of directors. Coleman also was a co-founder and first chief executive officer of BEA Systems, Inc., a world-leading infrastructure-software company.

Palm's annual report was just released late Friday. The report contains some hints as to what Palm is thinking in regards to the next version of the Palm OS. It also sheds some light on Palm's current situation with PalmSource concerning what will happen with the next-generation Palm OS.

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PalmInfocenter guest reviewer Ron brings us this review of Brando's Smart Bluetooth Keyboard. The basic design is a five row QWERTY keyboard with some of the less used characters activated in combination with a special function key. A second function key is available to launch the Palm apps assigned to the four hard buttons and to activate hotkeys and a few other functions as well. Read on for the full review...

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Canalys has just released their Q2 2006 worldwide smart mobile device research report on the smartphone and handheld device shipments. The latest research from Canalys highlights the continuing shift from handhelds to converged devices. Overall year-on-year market growth of all smart mobile devices was largely unchanged from the previous two quarters at 55%, but converged device shipments (smart phones and wireless handhelds) rose 73%, while handhelds continued to slide, down 33% compared to the same period one year ago.