What's this? Some joyous news on the Palm front? No need to Windex your spectacles -- the aforementioned handset maker has indeed managed to up its share of the smartphone market from 7.9% in the fourth quarter to 13.4% today, largely thanks to the popularity of its Centro. In general, analysts seemed quite pleased by the gains, noting that it (along with RIM) were able to take advantage of the 7.5% skid experienced by Apple during the same period. Despite the recent gains, Palm's market share is still down from 23% in Q1 a year ago, but considering the sweeping slump in cellphone sales of late, we'd say this should still go down as a victory -- however minor -- for the firm.

[Via Palm InfoCenter]

Can't win 'em all, we suppose. After a positively stellar fourth quarter of 2007 that saw Nokia grab a mind-boggling 40 percent of the world's mobile market share, the number one manufacturer slipped a smidge in the first quarter of this year, dropping down to 39 percent globally. That news is just one tidbit of a very interesting report that sees Nokia's year-over-year performance improve by a wide margin, while at the same time warning that the value of its mobile business is expected to decline versus 2007 thanks largely to the weak US dollar and a global economy that's been putting on the brakes as of late. Also of note is CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo's comment that the company will have no "major new products" shipping in the second quarter, likely putting to rest any hopes that we'd see the N78 out before July -- unless the guy doesn't consider the N78 a major new product, which we think would be a pretty misguided belief. Nokia also notes here that it still expects to grow its market share overall in 2008 -- despite the 1 percent decline this quarter -- so any other players out there gunning at nabbing a piece of that profitable pie are going to have to keep the pressure on, it seems.

Although it does sound as if the much protested plant closing in Bochum, Germany will indeed leave around 2,300 workers sans a job, the street was still loving what Nokia had to talk about today. In its latest earnings report, the firm announced that it raked in €15.7 billion ($22.76 billion) in revenues and €1.8 billion ($2.6 billion) in net profit from October to December 2007. Furthermore, the firm managed to move a record 133.5 million handsets in the aforementioned period, which is up some 27-percent from Q4 a year earlier. That sales surge enabled the handset maker to grab hold of 40-percent of the global cellphone market, and apparently, bigwigs at the company aren't expecting things to plateau in 2008. Needless to say, things are pretty spirited in Helsinki right about now, so feel free to tag the links below for even more jaw-dropping figures.

Read - Nokia 4Q profits up 44 percent, market share reaches 40 per cent
Read - Nokia's Q4 2007 report

RIM, -- previously known as NTP's patent punching bag -- seems to have clawed its way out of the misery that was last year and is showing some signs of a pleasant recovery. The Canadian messaging monster is reporting preliminary earnings in the 4rth quarter of $930.4 million, up 66% from the same quarter last year -- though we suspect that the $612.5 million payout to NTP is reflected here. Year totals are equally impressive with sales of $3 billion, which is up a booming 47 percent. Aside from the financial mumbo jumbo, what really caught our eyes is the addition of 1.02 million new subscribers (in this quarter alone) giving RIM a fat total of 8 million happy messaging enthusiasts. In the spirit of keeping things moving on the Blackberry front, what we really need to see now is some WiFi goodness in a handset, mmmkay RIM?

Okay, look, we seriously don't support laughing at Moto's misfortunes, and that's the truth -- but they just made it too easy here. Above is a screen shot of AP's brief about the sitch as it appeared for us on Yahoo! News. How better to compliment a MOTOSTRY than with a MOTOADVT, right? The ad here is encouraging us to get our news right on our V3xx, even if said news has to do with Motorola's bleak outlook for fiscal '07, apparently. Come on, if you don't get a good belly laugh out of that, you need to check your pulse... so yeah, anyway, the post-RAZR hangover continues at Moto, with CFO David Devonshire "retiring" to make way for Thomas Meredeth effective April Fools' Day. Profit forecasts are also continuing to follow their downward trend, with the first quarter now expected to rake in revenues of $9.2 to 9.3 billion, down from the $10.4 to 10.6 billion quoted just two short months ago. CEO Zander himself blames much of the shortfall on competitors' price pressures in the low-end segment; personally, we blame the shortfall on the fact that we still don't have a frickin' MOTORIZR Z8 in our hands, but what do we know?