NYT’s flagship app lit the blue touch paper for iPad, Wired also got in on the act early, both Denmark’s Information paper and Penguin Books have imagined themselves on the tablet, even The Economist is getting excited.

Now Holland’s De Telegraaf newspaper has published a concept video, showing how it’s thinking of approaching the gadget…

Another Dutch publisher, Sanoma Magazines, says publishers have been having “secretive” talks with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) about supporting iPad’s roll-out.

But, for all the iPad concepts we’ve seen lately, many are still only that. De Telegraaf’s video is a corporate montage designed to depict a forward-thinking multi-platform publisher, but it doesn’t exist.

In fact, it only renders Telegraaf.nl’s existing website on the gadget - and, as Apple watchers will know, Telegraaf’s Flash news videos seen in the clip won’t even work on the iPad.

Via Emerce.nl.

Bloggers got themselves tongue-tied Monday, when they leaped on comments - given by owner France Telecom’s deputy CEO during a French radio interview - as “confirmation” that the device is indeed launching soon, equipped with webcam, network connectivity for videophone chat and a retail partnership with Orange itself…

Stephane Richard acknowledged the tablet in the interview with Europe 1 (video at NowhereElse.fr, embedded below. Asked if it could benefit Orange subscribers, he spoke about the possibility of an apparent video calling feature. Now the blogosphere is rife with reports Richard has “confirmed” specs and a strategic relationship.

But it was nothing of the sort, the Orange PR machine tells paidContent:UK: “A few comments taken out of context, then interpreted into English.”

A full statement emailed to us has further back-tracking: “These responses in no way reflect Orange’s confirmation of the existence of the rumoured device. The spokesperson was merely confirming that he is aware of the speculation surrounding a launch and that Orange would be delighted to have such a product were it ever to be available.”

Still, this wouldn’t be the first time that an Orange executive spilled the beans about an upcoming Apple device. Back in 2007, amid lots of speculation about who would stock the iPhone, and when, the CEO Didier Lombard informally told journalists that Orange secured the deal weeks before the official announcement.

That deal was eventually confirmed, although it turned out to be short-lived: the French regulator eventually overturned the exclusive arrangement a year later to allow other carriers to sell it, too—something that may well happen with other devices in the future, including this tablet that no-one wants to confirm.

After web reports of an upcoming January 26 Apple event announcing the tablet, Kara at AllThingsD upgrades the calendar forecast to January 27.

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The levy applies to 22 European countries, and it covers any device that can be used to copy digital media. Hardware firms have been in talks with the agencies that collect the levies for the last 18 months, but those talks broke down this week, reports the FT.

Like yesterday’s news of a proposed French “Google (NSDQ: GOOG) tax” aimed at online advertising revenues, this European levy, which was established through the Copyright Directive,  is aimed at compensating copyright holders. In this case, the tax is meant to offset revenue claimed to be lost from personal copying.

DigitalEurope, the lobby group representing 50 of these companies, says that talks between the electronics firms and Gesac, the umbrella organisation for the collecting societies, “failed to deliver any concrete results or a way forward,” according to Bridget Cosgrave, director of DigitalEurope.

Although the charges apply in 22 countries, they differ across them. The BEUC, a consumer group that has allied with DigitalEurope points out (via EurActiv) that the same MP3 player can face a levy of €15 levy in Austria, €25 in France but only €3.15 in Spain.

Ireland, UK, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg are currently exempt from the law.

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In Q1 Palm sold over 800,000 smartphones worldwide, with the “vast majority” of those being Palm Pre, according to the company. But the Pre will be fighting for shelf space among never devices from Google (NSDQ: GOOG), LG (SEO: 066570) and Palm itself, which has said it will launch products before the end of May.

O2, which has exclusive rights to sell the Palm Pre in the UK, declines to give sales figures for individual devices. It told us: “Palm Pre sales are in line with expectations and we are happy with them.”

But, if the rumors of slow sales are true, this might not be such a bad thing. As it is, the operator has admitted that its network is already feeling the strain of too much smartphone use.

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And I quote David Young, CEO of Hachette Book Group, whom the article cites as saying: “We’re doing this to preserve our industry, I can’t sit back and watch years of building authors sold off at bargain-basement prices. It’s about the future of the business.”

Correction: This move is about the past of your business.

I’m just being a historian here when I point out that language like “We’re doing this to preserve our industry” is a classic symptom of what we at Forrester loving call The Media Meltdown. I wrote a whole report on this ailment and its many symptoms, chief among them is that media businesses attempt to preserve analog business models in the digital economy, even when analog economics no longer apply. This is exactly that scenario.

I have two very important messages to offer the book industry (most all of them clients, so I’m trying to be delicate here, the way a group of friends running an intervention for an alcoholic have to act even if it involves summoning tough love). The first message is the hardest to hear and it will make me some enemies. But the second message offers some hope and I encourage you book types to give it a fair hearing, because I have history and economics on my side.

Message #1: Dear book industry, I’m so sorry to tell you this, but your books really aren’t worth $25. Just like newspapers and magazines weren’t really worth what people were paying for them. And CDs, and DVDs. These were all worthy of a high price when analog economics were the only economics. When people understood that they paid $25 to get some paper, ink, and a binding, all of which had to be warehoused, shipped, and slotted on shelves in warm stores with Muzak and imported coffee odors wafting through.

A digital book suffers from none of those impediments. Therefore: it should be cheaper. Stop glorying in historical prices and accept the fact that a digital book should not cost $25 unless it comes with some awesome, exclusive premium that makes it worthy of such a price. Otherwise, $9.99 is darn awesome a price to pay, given how cheap it is to deliver an e-book (which has fewer bytes in it than a TV episode sold for $1.99 on iTunes). 

I am no Chris Anderson. I am not telling you that content wants to be free. I’m just telling you that it wants to behave according to digital economics, not analog inefficiencies. I understand that you have the awful burden of serving both analog and digital economics simultaneously. That’s real life and I don’t pretend that you can go digital in a month, or even a year. So what’s a good publisher to do?

Message #2: You can actively “window” in a way that doesn’t alienate consumers. Just as I want you to charge a fair price for your digital content, I want you to be able to sell physical books for as long as a majority of consumers still want them. So here’s my proposal: Rather than creating artificial scarcity by holding e-books back four months, why not dynamically price your offerings so that a consumer who really wants that new Stephen King book on his or her digital reader can get it the same day as the hardback. Here are two possible, nonexclusive scenarios, both of which are better than what you currently have planned:

Bundle the digital download with the hardback. Having a hard time selling that hardback book these days? Bundle the digital version (at Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), they’d be happy to facilitate this for you). It costs pennies to deliver the digital version, it gives you a way to establish a relationship with the consumer since they’ll have to sign up to get the download, and it creates a truly multiplatform consumer experience that can’t be beat.

Offer a premium digital version to coincide with hardback release. Worried that $25 can’t compete with $9.99? It can’t, frankly, and 10 years from now, it won’t have to, but for now, manage that gap by offering digital content in windows: premium and basic. This takes a page from our recommendations to the music industry and it applies here perfectly. Offer a premium digital version (with a personalized dedication page from the author to the reader —automated, of course—an exclusive interview with the author, and some behind the scenes essays) for $19.99 that goes on sale the same day as the hardback. But make it clear to buyers that if they are willing to wait and don’t want the premium content, they can pre-order the $9.99 version right now, while all the marketing for the hardback is in full swing and awareness is at its peak. The money is already committed, and the digital book is simply delivered four months hence.

These options are 10 times more interesting to consumers than what you’ve given them today. Plus, they allow you to manage that awkward transition from analog inefficiencies to digital economics. You become a friend to readers in this scenario, not their headmaster or disciplinarian. We call that Media Rebuild, a phase beyond Media Meltdown and one we welcome you to if you’re ready.

James McQuivey is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, where he serves Consumer Product Strategy professionals and contributes to the Forrester blog focused on that area.

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Developed with The Wonderfactory in intense work since September, version 1.5 is innovative, visually engaging with stunning SI photos and video, touch screen, and looks to be far from shovel ware. (Screengrabs here.) Unlike some of the projects I’ve seen, this isn’t a magazine of the future imagined for years from now. But it’s not the e-reader magazine of today. It can’t be. The current e-readers being sold lack the magic ingredient: full color. They don’t all have touch technology, either.

McDonell insists: “You need a certain level of color technology and touch technology to make it work the way it should to have a really solid, good interesting experience. ... Time Inc. wants to be ready and that’s what we’re pointing towards.” But he and Wonderfactory founder David Link told me they don’t think that day is far away. Link’s “guess” is 2010. “We see a lot of devices hopefully launching by the end of summer.”

Even if that time line pans out, though, it won’t erase the hundreds of thousands of e-readers already out there that can’t provide the environment they think digitally delivered magazines need for success. Would Time Inc. need to subsidize devices? “We’re not looking at it that way,” McDonell said, despite the results from focus groups that responded well to paying for access but were worried most about how much the “appliance” would cost. Link says the cost is one reason they want to be device agnostic.

They didn’t dwell on that issue but when pushed, admitted they were also looking at interim options rather than simply wait for the right devices. “We’re looking into that right now,” Link said. McDonell, who isn’t thrilled the idea of waiting months to see at least some of this in use, added “We think about that all the time.” He points to Flyp, where former Time Inc. colleague Jim Gaines is editor, and its treatment of an SI “bonus” story—those are the novella-length in-depth pieces SI so prizes— on Joe Paterno as an example of how event coverage might be handled on a device.

They are designing with a tablet format in mind so what they’ve come up with could work on notebooks with touch capability. Demoed to those in person on an HP notebook using Smart Touch technology, the templates are being designed in three sizes—6”, 9” and 11”— to be platform agnostic. The results are a blend of the full content of the iconic weekly magazine, 30 percent or so of the material produced for SI.com, and some produced just for the e-reader. They took the first version to focus groups after five weeks and say (no shock there) they had “very, very positive results.” The version I saw was the next step; the one after this will zero in on what they can do for advertisers. When I asked if they would consider a Smart Touch version, for instance, McDonell said, “We’re open to just about anything. We’re anxious to collaborate and move quickly.”

—Would readers pay? They also asked the focus groups if they would pay for it. “Absolutely.” McDonell says they asked about different prices to get access with the print magazine and got a positive answer up to $50. “We realized we were not being scientific enough. We better think this through.”  He added, “The good news for us, at least from the chair that I sit in, is there was no resistance here in the way there is resistance to subscriptions. Maybe it’s just that word. There was no resistance to paying for applications, even though there’s the resistance to paying for subscriptions even if you really like the magazine.”

—Not just for SI: As I mentioned at the top, McDonell, Link and their teams are using SI as a testbed for Time Inc. Says McDonell: “Every editor at Time Inc. has seen what we’re doing here. I show it to them at every step. We’re framing the house, then we’ll pass it around for some finished carpentry.” As they work, they consider how what they are doing will play out in People, Time, Real Simple or the other Time Inc. titles. Link explains: “We’re looking at hopefully standardizing a lot of navigation. The look can change.”

In Germany, two carriers—Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and O2—have picked up the device, as well as mobile phone retailer The Phone House. No word on when it will go on sale, or which carriers in Argentina and Italy are selling the phone.

Motorola did not disclose where else the Milestone might launch, but the news that European carriers are picking up the device is another sign that the still-struggling handset maker could be making its way back.

In the company’s Q3 earnings call, co-CEO Sanjay Jha had said that at least for the first half of 2010 the phone maker’s focus was on the United States, China and Latin America. Europe, Jha, implied, was a trickier market.

He noted that European carriers had their own services and own operating systems, and typically, to ensure a device got “hero status” meant accommodating them. Plus he added, the company would also have to make an “additional brand investment” into the market, something that would depend on the type of commitment it got from carriers.

The Milestone has similar specs to the Droid, aside from a few tweaks. The device supports HSPA, instead of EV-DO Rev A and also comes with Motorola’s own navigation application Motonav, instead of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps’ version.

As Orange UK CEO Tom Alexander promised earlier, the carrier has sidestepped a price war.

Orange has announced monthly price plans for the phone that are nearly identical to O2’s, save a few pence difference. The phone will also be offered on pay as you go deals, with the iPhone 3GS 32GB version costing £539 ($883). Full pricing details below:

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In its release, Nokia complains that it’s spent €40 million billion ($60 billion) on R&D in the last 20 years and that its licensed its tech standards to manufacturers in 40 countries worldwide. Nokia’s VP for legal & IP Ilkka Rahnasto is taking no prisoners: “By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation,” he says. We’ve contacted both Nokia and Apple for further comment and will update when we can. Update: Apple simply told us that is “doesn’t comment on pending litigation”.

One thing that’s very much not clear is why Nokia is suing now, two years after the iPhone came out. There’s no suggestion from either side that this move is a business tactic from Nokia in the face of Apple’s success, but there’s no hiding the differing fortunes of both firms.

iPhones sales are still growing at astonishing rates in the US and Europe, Nokia’s heartland, and 7.4 million of them were sold in Q309 alone—making it more than 30 million to date—which helped Apple to a $1.67 billion quarterly profit. Nokia meanwhile, made a $1.36 billion loss for its Q3 and has all but no chance of increasing its market share in 2009 as it had hoped at the start of the year.

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New guidelines issued on Tuesday say third-party deals must be cost-efficient, not have a negative effect on the wider market and help fulfill the Beeb’s public purposes. Read the full document here (pdf).

The iPlayer is available on 23 platforms, including 12 mobile phones, Sony’s PS3 and Virgin Media’s TV On Demand service, which accounts for a quarter of all iPlayer views.

Now BBC.co.uk COO Kerstin Mogull writes in a blog post: “We hope to add more platforms before the end of this year, but to deliver a high-quality user experience we sometimes need to adapt the product ourselves, and the huge variation of standards in the market makes this an expensive and complex process.”

The process means the BBC committing to build new iPlayer implementations, under certain provisos, for a range of devices and services…

The document says the BBC will consider “adjusting” the tech in this way for devices with more than 100,000 users, but will consider creating a “bespoke” version for devices with more than 500,000 users.

These rules set out the ground rules for future deals and signal that the Beeb is keen to sign more of them now its ambitious plans to export the iPlayer’s entire coding have hit a stumbling block.

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Release | Webcast | Slides | Financials

Overall revenue fell 20 percent year on year to €9.8 billion (£9.1 billion; $14.6 billion)— a one-percent drop on a lacklustre Q2—and a loss of €913 million (£842 million; $1.36 billion), compared to a €1.46 billion profit in Q308. From January to September of this year, the company made €28.99 billion in revenue, a 24 percent drop year on year, while it racked up a loss of €622 million (£580 million; $928 million).

These figures aren’t helped by a €908 million one-off impairment charge on Nokia Siemens Networks, leading to an overall loss for the division of €1.1 billion, which is blamed on “challenging competitive factors… in the infrastructure and related services business”. Nokia admits that “the recoverability of the investment in Nokia Siemens Networks has declined” as a result of its losses.

Nokia blames the slow global economy, but CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasuvo also explains: “The demand for mobile devices improved in many markets during Q3… Our volumes and net sales were, however, somewhat constrained by component shortages we encountered across the portfolio.”

While the company has set ambitious growth goals moving forward, for 2009, it expects to sell 1.12 billion phones, which would be a seven percent drop on 2008 and three percent better then its previous full-year sales estimate.

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These aren’t the Kindle’s first fees for Whispernet access. Each Kindle comes with an e-mail address; receiving attachments to that address—called the Personal Document Service—initially was 10 cents per document but in April changed to 15 cents per megabyte (rounded up). You pay that fee whether or not the Amazon document conversion works. For instance, I sent myself the PDF of a High Holidays prayer book with Hebrew in it; the results were a mix of text and gibberish but I still paid 45 cents.

That’s cheap, though, compared to the per book fee: the global Kindle has 1.4GB of user space, which Amazon estimates is room for about 1,500 books. That makes the average book size about nine-tenths of a megabyte—or 15 cents if e-mailed. The $2 international Whispernet surcharge (technically, $1.99 but we’ve rounded up, too) is more than 13 times that cost.

I’ve been using Kindle from the beginning and would have appreciated access to my subscriptions during trips overseas. But $5 a week for the privilege of getting something I’ve already paid for sounds steep—especially when Amazon promised when I subscribed that the price “includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet” with no mention of geography. That language is still in place.

One non-cost detail: U.S. owners will have access to the U.S. store when traveling. We’re still looking into details about how the international store will work.

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The timing means Vodafone will miss out on the fight to sell iPhones in the crucial run-up to Christmas, when O2 and Orange will be going head-to-head to create the best deal. But it’s still a big win for Vodafone, which has targeted iPhone deals in the UK and Germany.

As CEO Vittorio Colao told investors on the company’s Q109 earnings call: “I can tell you for sure we have had and still have some negative iPhone effect. It’s clear the iPhone is working very well in the UK; it’s particularly clear that not having it has hindered us.

Like O2 and Orange before it, Vodafone is allowing punters to pre-register their interest in getting one, but there’s no details yet on Vodafone’s or Orange’s pricing for the device.

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In a fit of de-ja vu identical to O2’s previous 3G and 3GS announcements, Orange, too, has opened a site for people to register their interest.

It’s a boost for Orange as it moves to merge with T-Mobile UK to create the UK’s biggest mobile operator. Reports had linked Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Mobile UK to a bid for the iPhone when O2’s exclusivity runs out; depending on to what extent the two telcos are allowed to merge, perhaps now it won’t need its own deal.

Orange now sells iPhone in 28 countries and territories; the company itself lost the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in France last year after an anti-trust ruling.

It was perhaps telling that O2 made no mention of the iPhone is its Q109 earnings report. Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) Europe CEO Matthew Key was still optimistic about keeping it though: he told analysts Telefonica has exclusive iPhone contracts in UK, Spain and Ireland and referring to the relationship with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) said: “They’re extremely happy with us and we’re extremely happy with them.”

But does the deal make good business sense for Orange? UK demand is still there for the iPhone, but Danish analysts Strand Consult recently questioned the wisdom of selling it, not least because rivals sellers can be locked into unprofitable price wars in territories where Apple moves to non-exclusivity

O2 retains exclusive rights to sell the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre in the UK and will be hoping the product can somehow overcome Apple’s formidable marketing machine to win over affluent British consumers.

Update: O2 has responded to Orange’s announcement saying: “We always knew that iPhone exclusivity was for a limited period of time, but our relationship with Apple continues and will be an ongoing success.” The company claims over one million iPhone customers and says it is “becoming the home of smartphones” despite the exclusive contract loss.

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With its 8.1 inch screen, the iRex fits squarely between the Kindle DX (10”, $489) and the upcoming Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader Daily Edition (7”, $399). It’s not as expensive as the Kindle DX, but it’s still costly—and it’s not close to the $100-$150 a recent report suggested it will take to move from very niche to mass market.

It also takes awareness, which is partly where Best Buy comes in. The NYT says the electronics chain is adding a new area to stores (after limiting e-reader sales to a few stores and online), and is training “thousands” of employees in how to talk about the iRex, the Sony Reader and the e-reader concept. (Maybe we should set up an e-reader secret shopper challenge to see how it worked.) Kindle isn’t sold in stores but Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) tries to match would-be buyers with owners in their area for hands-on demos.

—Barnes & Noble: Borders has had Sony kiosks for years. IRex already has a deal to include the Barnes & Noble eBookstore but it could have been more; Kevin Hamilton, the CEO of iRex in North America, told the NYT Barnes & Noble was offered the chance to have its brand, not the company’s, on the device but no agreement was reached.

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iPod and its siblings revolutionised the music business and gave labels a lifeline just when they needed one. On Apple’s own stats, shown Wednesday, it still has 73.8 percent of the mobile music player market, with “other” manufacturers languishing on 18 percent, SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) 7.2 percent and Microsoft’s Zune 1.1 percent.

So the number of people who own at least one iPod is smaller than Apple’s headline stats because some people own more than one? Big deal. A company that successfully forces customers to shell out again after 18 to 24 months is a company that’s doing well; a tactic seen in other sectors like white goods.

But Mulligan, whom we followed up with, has a darker warning for the companies that rely on iPod: “I don’t think there is anything that reflects particularly badly on Apple; this is what device sales are all about,” he says.

“But it is a big big deal for digital music sales. It means that the key dynamic in digital music sales is changing direction. The number of new potential customers arriving in to the marketplace is slowing.”

Mulligan’s thesis, which cuts through the larger numbers being bandied about, would suggest that digital music sales, which still aren’t offsetting record label revenue decline, are set to plateau as does the number of people who own players.

“And, of course,” Mulligan tells us, “if you get more sophisticated with the modeling, you can end up with even lower numbers (e.g. factoring in multiple device ownership etc).”

One possible route to continued growth, we reckon - unlimited-access music services like Spotify and Rhapsody that, unlike the a la carte track download option offered by iTunes and its ilk, offer up the entire “celestial jukebox”. We’ll see…

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While CEO Steve Jobs did make an appearance at the company’s event in San Francisco to detail Apple’s product lineup for the holidays, there was no mention of a Tablet device, or of any resolution with the Beatles on getting the band’s valuable music catalog into iTunes (despite many hints that it may be coming).

Mostly, the announcements were incremental upgrades to its most-popular products, including iTunes and iPods. But also what the company signaled was its intentions to enter the video-camera market and take on competitors such as Flip, which was recently acquired by Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO). Jobs: “This market is really exploding and we really want to get in on this.”

During the roughly 75-minute event, we heard about iTunes, an entire new iPod lineup, including a video iPod and a cheaper iPod Touch, and were treated to a performance by Norah Jones. A full run-down of the announcements after the jump…

—Video iPods: Perhaps the most exciting part of the announcements today was the addition of video capabilities to the iPod Nano, the best-selling music device by Apple which has sold 100 million to date. Now it’s adding a video camera, mic and speaker to the device to compete against the digital cameras of the world. The new iPod nano will have a larger 2.2-inch color display and a polished aluminum finish. It will also have a built-in FM radio and pedometer. The new iPod nano is available for sale today. The 8GB model is $149 and a 16GB model is $179.

—New iPod Touch: Apple announced the new iPod touch lineup, which lowers the price to $199 from $229, providing the same price point as the cheapest iPhone, however, without the wireless contract. Apple SVP Phil Schiller said they have a lot of experience with pricing iPods, and when they lowered the price of the Nano to $199, sales doubled. “The really important thing is the power of that price. $199 allows for an even more affordable gateway to the App Store for our customers.” The 8GB iPod touch is $199, and the iPod touch 32GB model will be $299 and 64GB model for $399. No camera or video-recording capabilities were added to the device, making this a clearer competitive to the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

—The new iTunes 9: Apple launched iTunes 9 today, which adds a lot of music features and updates for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including iTunes LP, Home Sharing and updated Genius technology. The iTunes LP feature allows artists to upload album art, videos and lyrics to enhance the music-buying experience. Home Sharing allows users to transfer music, movies and TV shows to up to five authorized computers in the home. The Genius feature gets an update too with new mixes, which are created using a music library of 54 billion songs, making it sound a lot like Pandora. The new iTunes also improves the iPhone experience, by allowing you to organize your iPhone apps right on your computer screen in iTunes. The experience on the phone itself can be very tedious, especially as people add hundreds of apps. Ringtones were also added to iTunes for $1.29 apiece.

—New iPod shuffle: The tiny iPod that clips to clothes is now cheaper. Priced as low as $59 for 2GB, it now comes in five colors. The 4GB model is $79, and a stainless steel special edition is $99.

Asus will face steep competition, but at least based on the price of its lower-end device it should be able to gain ground. At roughly $164, the device would likely be the cheapest e-reader on the market (Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) sells its Kindle 2 for $299). And a survey released last week by Forrester indicated that the potential market for e-readers would increase significantly if the average price of the devices was cut to below $150.

Asus also has experience disrupting established markets with cheaper products. It launched its low-price Eee PC netbook in 2007, which has since stolen market share from traditional laptop makers and led to a wave of other netbooks coming to market.

Other big consumer electronics companies are also likely to soon introduce e-readers. In early June, Forrester pegged a number of device manufacturers—including Panasonic, Palm (NSDQ: PALM), Lenovo, and LG—as possible future entrants. Samsung announced plans for its own e-reader in late July.

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—UK measurement Mobile industry ody GSMA has signed up ComScore (NSDQ: SCOR) to be its official mobile internet metrics measurement partner in the UK. The GSMA and the UK’s five mobile operators earlier this year announced a new mobile browsing measurement scheme, Mobile Media Metrics, which ComScore will now operate. The data will be verified by ABC Electronic and the first results are out in Q4 this year. Release.

—TomTom: The Dutch satnav maker is bringing its real-time HD Traffic services to device users in Italy, in an exclusive partnership with Vodfone Italy. The service, which provides traffic reports, fuel price data and local Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search, goes live in the middle of 2010. HD Traffic is currently available in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and France. Beligum and Portugal are being added later this year. Release.