On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Steve Ballmer is one of those guys who just can't hide a mood. Probably a terrible poker player. Which is why-- when Microsoft is crowing about Kinect sales-- that the refusal to provide Windows Phone 7 sales figures is damning.

UK store deal aggregator MobilesPlease says Phone 7 has accounted for just 3% of their smartphone sales, with Android outselling WP7 handsets 15:1. With 800,000 visitors to their sites, you have to take this report seriously.

The site says Symbian devices outsold Windows Phone 7 handsets by 3:1, with one device (Nokia N8) outselling all WP7 devices from a variety of manufacturers.

They even questioned one Carphone Warehouse store who claimed no Windows Phone 7 devices were on the sales floor. That's 0 for sale, that's nada to the cash register. Although the store did volunteer they “might have one in the back.” They probaly would have Palm PDAs back in storage if thet went looking....

That report makes sense as Carphone Warehouse corporate just announced they believe Android will be their best seller in their 2000+ European stores in this all-important Q4. That drops Nokia down a peg after decade of sales leadership.

CPW has the exclusive contract to sell the newest Google-branded phone, the Nexus S, which will go on sale this month with Android 2.3 software, the "Gingerbread".

Meanwhile, retailers and operators report Microsoft's Phone 7 phones, released in October, have seen disappointing sales due to product shortages, consumer confusion and (in UK) rivalry between networks over co-branding with Orange.

CPW chief commercial officer, Graham Stapleton says, "Customers tell us that being able to have a choice, being able to personalise their choice of phone is a key difference about Android compared to some of the other platforms out there."

Microsoft's relaunch of its mobile offering through the Windows Phone 7 devices is off to a slow start. Stapleton says sales "haven't yet met expectations." He actually hopes the platform would grow in popularity. "It would be healthy for customers if Microsoft were here, too."

Better hang up now. Ballmer is not going to be pleased.

GoMobilesPlease

First, Sony announced a new project (Sony’s Networked Application Platform or SNAP) that will allow developers to create apps for the company's TVs, set-top boxes and other devices.

Now SNAP has been snapped off. The project is on hold and no one knows exactly why-- except Sony. For a conglomerate like Sony to announce and freeze a publicly announced project suggests either litigation issues (or a conversation to avoid litigation) or an acquisition (let's imagine the fabled Apple buys Sony discussion is taking place or Sony is buying up a software platform) or a tech swap deal (going with Microsoft in exchange for patent concessions).

SNAP is based on GNUstep, an open source variant of OpenStep developed by NeXT (before the Jobs-owned company was acquired by Apple).

Sony wants to leverage the open source community to deliver an alternative to Apple's iOS Cocoa Touch. Apple maintains the OpenStep spec through Cocoa and Mac OS X, but Sony believes GNUstep code has "diverged considerably."

Sony's plan would  not enable its products to use iOS apps (created for the iPhone or iPad), but would offer developers a  platform familiar to those who have already used Cocoa Touch to target Apple's products.

That doesn't sound like a bad plan from Sony, except for all the platform competition that iOS itself faces. So why the freeze?

Apple appears ready to use Cocoa for its Mac App Store. Can this Cocoa-centric development have anything to do with Sony's sudden SNAP freeze?

GoSNAP

Shopping search engine Twenga's Christmas survey shows 47% of Europeans do not want a 3DTV for Christmas.

The British (52%), Germans (52%) and Dutch (62%) in particular are not interested in 3DTVs.

Meanwhile the French (57%), Italians (69%) and Spanish (61%) hope to find some 3-dimensional cheer this season.

The main reason behind the general European reluctance towards 3D is price-- 32% of British, 36% of French, 39% of Italians and 48% of Spanish respondents find it too expensive.

Go Twenga Survey Finds Europeans Still Cautious of 3DTV

Apple jumps on the 3D bandwagon as it gets a patent for a glasses-free 3DTV solution.

The system promises to not only not require glasses but also keep up the 3D illustion for multiple viewers, even if they move around the room.

The patent looks fairly complicated-- it suggests a combined projector/screen/camera system. It would keep track of the viewer's position and movements to beam a 2 separate images (one for each of the viewer's eyes) on the textured pixels of a special screen. The viewer's brain would then reconstruct the image, autostereographically, without grlasses.

Apple's patent says the result would be a "realistic holographic" visual experience, and also suggests Kinect-style 3D input applications.

Will the patent see use in the near future? One hopes so-- getting rid of the glasses would certainly make 3D far more appealing to customers.

Go Apple Wins Patent for Glasses-Free 3DTV