The headrest mount, which works with Wallee’s existing iPad case mounting system, attaches to the headrest rail of any vehicle, and rotates in and out to provide viewing to one or more unruly kids who need entertaining in the back seat on long trips. It’s a simple, sturdy design in and of itself, but it’s really more impressive as the latest proof that Wallee’s creators at Studio Proper are into delivering long-term value rather than chasing short-term gain.

A lot of my favorite cases for the original iPad, including the ZAGGmate iPad keyboard case, required me to buy a new version in order to play nice with the iPad 2. The Wallee also required a new case, but it stung much less since all the accessories the case is designed to work with remained useful. Wall mounting disks, stands and a VESA mount still work with the new iPad 2 version of the Wallee case, and recent additions to the line, including a hand strap for easy one-handed use, and the upcoming Wallee Lock for secure, interactive iPad-based displays mean investment in the system continues to feel fresh, two years after the original Wallee’s introduction.

Most mobile device users will likely go through piles of device accessories that quickly become as outdated as the gadgets they’re designed for, so it’s nice to see a system that embraces and builds on its past, rather than simply starting fresh with each new whim of Apple’s design department.

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Apple’s 37 million fourth quarter iPhone shipments were a far cry from the market leaders, however. Nokia still ruled the roost with 113.5 million handset shipments, while Samsung edged closer to grabbing the top spot with a 20 percent increase compared to the previous year, to a total of 97.6 million units shipped. Samsung succeeded by growing its smartphone sales, but also by increasing its feature phone shipment numbers in an otherwise soft market for those devices.

While Apple was the biggest gainer percentage-wise during the quarter, LG suffered the biggest drop,with a negative 42.2 percent change compared to the same period in 2010. Its total shipments were at 17.7 million for the year, which is on par with 2007 levels. LG definitely felt the hit of the waning feature phone market and was unable to do much to impress consumers with its smartphones, either.

Apple also ranked third overall in terms of  mobile phone shipments throughout the whole calendar year thanks to its fourth quarter results, with 93.2 iPhone shipments and year-over-year growth of 96.2 percent.

IDC predicts that the mobile phone market will continue to experience double-digit growth, despite only seeing 11.1 percent growth year-over-year in 2011, versus 18.7 percent growth between 2009 and 2010.

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Nguyen goes into a lot of detail, and it’s a must-read for anyone thinking about commissioning an iOS (or really any mobile OS) application. Here’s one passage in particular that I know will resonate with a lot of freelance devs:

Converting an iPhone app to iPhone/iPad universal app: This is the worst ‘additional feature’ found in iPhone development contracts. Because an iPad app is not a frikin’ additional feature. The iPad app is always more complex than iPhone app, and most of the time requires entirely different interface and interaction mechanism. It’s like making an electric bicycle and then convert[ing] it to a fuel-powered motorcycle! They are very similar at what they do, but under the hood, the difference is immense. [Emphasis in the original]

A lot of companies may be interested in what an app can do for their business, but without a good sense of what kind of resources need to be invested in order to create the app in the first place, there is bound to be ample frustration on all sides. Nguyen’s no-nonsense primer is a good way to help avoid some of that frustration.

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Flygrip $29.95

I was amazed as to how quickly I fell in love with the Flygrip’s simplicity of design and elegance It’s a clip that sticks on the back of an existing iPhone case, or Flygrip’s custom case. While it adds some bulk to the back of the case, it actually isn’t annoying. Quite the opposite. Fully retracted, it allows you too hold your iPhone securely with your ring and forefinger, leaving the rest of your hand able to type. Being able to text and tweet easily on the go made me a believer out of me.

Not only does it make the iPhone easier to hold, but the Flygrip can also act as a kickstand for both portrait and landscape mode, which made catching up on email during lunch an absolute breeze. At $29.95, it’s affordable, and you don’t have to give up your existing case.

xPrintServer $149.95

Although Apple’s AirPrint only supports a limited set of printers, iOS products like Readdle’s Printer Pro and desktop products such as Ecamm’s Printopia have extended the iPad’s print capabilities. Lantronix has a desktop-and device-independent solution to make existing network printers available to any iOS device also on the network. The device supports up to 10 printers, and retails for $149.95. It’s a great option for small businesses that want to quickly and easily make their existing printers available to employee devices.

Prizm Stand $24.95

The Prizm series of iPhone and iPad stands from Hub Innovations is another simple, elegant product. The stand is made up of two metal pieces that come together to hold your iOS device in place while charging or just on display. Starting at $24.95, they come in a variety of colors and can be custom engraved.

I liked that these stands didn’t suffer from the feature bloat or bling overload of most other accessories at the show. This is the type of holder you’d use at home or at your business to frame your iPad with style and without stealing the focus of what’s on the iPad screen. In fact, the metal can be engraved with company information to help provide a custom branding solution. They were at hit with show-goers, so it stands to reason they’d succeed with customers and clients, too.

Wormhole Switch $39.95

One of the few non-iOS focused innovations at the show was the Wormhole Switch by j5create. This product uses an attached of USB connectors to not only control another computer’s keyboard and mouse, but also transport data between computers while avoiding the network entirely.

Even the fastest broadband networks can’t match raw USB speeds, and anyone who’s transferred a large file over a home network knows how much it slows things down. While other USB-direct connect options exist, this product makes it easy for even novices to set up, with software that loads directly from the device.

At a reasonable price of $39.95, the time you’ll save waiting for files to transfer is well worth the cost.

iKeep Charger $49.99

The iKeep Charger is a combination iPhone and micro USB charger conveniently connected to a retractable cord with a carabiner hook for clipping onto a bag, belt loop, etc. The AC plug folds invisibly into the unit, making it easy to quickly charge your iPhone or other devices while on the go without adding bulk. Unlike the iPhone’s stark black and white options, the iKeep Charger comes in eight different colors to match your outfits, or simply your personal taste.

There are my top picks from the show. What stood ou to you? Let us know in the comments.

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Update: On Monday Apple number cruncher extraordinaire Horace Dediu at Asymco put together some charts showing how Apple’s R&D spending trends. While Apple spent $758 million on R&D during the first fiscal quarter of 2012, it’s a very tiny sliver of the company’s overall sales, which were $46.3 billion. What’s most interesting to me is how Apple’s R&D spending as a percentage of overall sales ranks among the industry heavyweights. While $758 million is a lot of money, it’s lags behind the $2.3 billion Microsoft spent on research and development during the same quarter, and Google’s $1.3 billion.

Here’s a chart showing how Apple ranks among its tech industry peers:

Credit: Asymco

Apple sits right below Hewlett-Packard and just above Dell — two companies that haven’t produced anything truly interesting in the consumer realm in years. And it is far below the often innovation-challenged behemoths Microsoft, Nokia, RIM and others.

The takeaway is this: Bloated bureaucracies spend a lot of money on innovation and occasionally make something new and interesting. Steve Jobs’ insistence on maintaining a startup mentality within Apple (even with 30,000+ corporate employees) and the company’s ability to only focus on a few things at a time mean Apple can spend less and get much more for its investment.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user kenteegardin

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Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents was in attendance at the court’s announcement of the ruling on Friday and said that Judge Andreas Voss didn’t specify any particular reason for the decision. The first ruling against Samsung last week also didn’t include a reason. Mueller said at that time that the reasons could either be that Apple had been found not to infringe the patent or that Samsung’s rights in exerting the patent had been deemed exhausted, which would result in Apple’s being granted a license by default. The same reasons could also be applied to Friday’s ruling.

For Samsung, this is definitely a setback, but it isn’t the end of the road; the company still has three other 3G/UMTS patents at issue in separate complaints filed with the Mannheim court. As long as the reasons behind the dismissals of these two lawsuits aren’t somehow related to all the patents in question, it could still claim a victory on one or more of those remaining.

Samsung could also still appeal the decision, and given that it, like Apple, posted record earnings for its most recently completed quarter, there is no financial barrier preventing it from doing so. With two companies at the top of their game slugging it out in the legal arena, there is little incentive for either to stop.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook said during his company’s recent earnings call that iPad sales haven’t really been affected by the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is no doubt contributing heavily to the success of Android tablets. It’s also likely the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet are included in the Android figures. Instead, Cook admitted the iPad has had some cannibalization effect on sales of Macs, and he predicted that one day, the tablet market will be larger in volume than the PC market.

Compared to Android, Apple still has a dominant position in the tablet market, with a 57.6-percent share compared to Android’s 39.1 percent, according to Strategy Analytics’ most recent numbers. In terms of year-over-year growth, the tablet space has grown by 150 percent between the end of 2010 and 2011. In other words, even if shares were more evenly split, the iPad would still be seeing big gains in unit sales.

The PC market, on the other hand, contracted by around six percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm Gartner. That’s despite 20 percent growth by Apple’s own Mac line of computers. Kevin Tofel recently pointed out here on GigaOM that half of computing device sales are now mobile. If the trend of growing tablet and smartphone sales continue, and PC sales continue to decline, we’ll soon be in a position where mobiles are considered a primary device by the majority of users.

Apple will continue to sell iPads. A new refresh expected in the coming months might even help it turn the tide of slipping market share, since while the low-cost Kindle Fire may be a success, other Android tablet makers still seem to be having a hard time putting out a product consumers can get genuinely excited about. Kevin wrote last week about how Android 4.0, while it improves the Android tablet experience, still has a lot of glaring pain points. Also, Android’s tablet-specific app library lags considerably behind Apple’s, and isn’t catching up anywhere near as fast as the market on the smartphone side.

The companies putting out Android tablets that fail to achieve the Kindle Fire’s level of success are the same ones being hurt by the slowing PC market, and they’re the ones that stand to lose the most. Amazon’s Kindle fire has reportedly sold as many as 6 million units through the end of 2011, according to estimates, which would make it the world’s best-selling Android tablet.

Apple continues to appeal to a steadily growing audience of tablet users, but Amazon is answering the call of those who were happier buying bargain-priced netbooks for their basic computing needs, rather than spending more on an iPad. That’s the market PC makers should have been trying to retain with their own tablet efforts, and also the one Amazon has positioned itself best to appeal to.

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Enterprise mobile security provider Good Technology on Wednesday released its quarterly data report for the fourth quarter of 2011. The report detailed the progress of iOS and Android devices in enterprise activations among its customers, which include half the companies on the Fortune 100, among others. Apple’s iPhone 4S was the big winner of the quarter, nabbing the top spot as the most-activated device, followed by the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively.

Credit: Good Technology

The 4S represented 31 percent of all device activations counted during the quarter, nearly matching the total for all Android handsets, which accounted for 35 percent of all smartphone activations. Apple’s iPad 2 and iPad together accounted for 94 percent of all tablet activations.

Much like we’ve seen with new consumer device purchases, the release of Apple’s iPhone 4S in October began the reversal of a trend in which new Android activations were approaching Apple’s numbers, as you can see in the chart below. From October to December, Good saw a steady monthly increase in the percentage of iOS activations, matched by a decrease in Android device activations. Good says bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies likely had a strong impact on Apple’s enterprise success with the iPhone 4S.

Credit: Good Technology

A new phone from Apple was bound to incite a buying spree, but the numbers have remained strong in the months following launch. It will be interesting to see if the trend of growth continues, both in the consumer and enterprise markets, now that the 4S has been on the market for some time.

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Demand for the iPhone 4S helped Apple’s U.S. share of the smartphone market climb to 44.9 percent in the last quarter of 2011, Kantar said, doubling from the same period a year ago and gaining a very slight edge over Google’s platform. Android slipped to 44.8 percent from 50 percent during the quarter.

Apple’s success isn’t isolated to the U.S., either. Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar’s global consumer insight director told Reuters, ”overall, Apple sales are now growing faster than Android across the nine countries we cover,” which include the U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil and Mexico, among others.

Other research firms have recently released data suggesting that iOS was rapidly closing the distance with its Android smartphone rivals. The NPD Group and Nielsen  both released their own studies earlier this month that showed iOS trailing Android slightly in the U.S. smartphone race, but Kantar’s is the first to put Apple on top.

In the U.K., Apple grew its share from 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to 22 percent for the same period in 2010. And while Apple grew most quickly in the countries covered, Kantar is quick to point out smartphones are experiencing strong growth in all the areas tested, meaning while Android may have dropped market share in some locations, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a drop in sales.

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Notably, this dominance of the field has continued even as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as a handful of other companies, have poured into this market to sell tablets. Still, none have been able to dislodge Apple’s tight grip on consumers’ demonstrated preference here. And CEO Tim Cook basically dismissed Amazon and its Kindle Fire (and others) as true competitors. Here’s what Cook said on Tuesday during the earnings call for one of the company’s best quarters ever:

I think people really want to do multiple things with their tablets, so we don’t see limited-function tablets and e-readers as being in the same category. They’ll sell a fair number of units but people who want an iPad won’t settle for limited function.

Last year was supposed to be the year of the tablet … but most people would agree it was the year of the iPad, for the second year in a row. And we’re going to continue to innovate like crazy.

Data from Pew Research found that during December that both e-readers and tablet ownership nearly doubled, so clearly some people want e-readers. And sales estimates indicate Amazon, whose Kindle Fire is significantly cheaper than the iPad, may have sold around 5 million Kindle Fires between October and December 2011.

Not only is Apple’s tablet outselling all other competitors in its market, it’s taking down devices outside tablets too. On the call, Cook also noted that per NPD data, the iPad outsold desktop PCs last quarter. He also repeated, as he has for the past few quarters, that he does see the iPad taking away sales that would otherwise go to Macs as well. And he’s OK with that:

There is cannibalization of the Mac by the iPad but we continue to believe there is much more cannibalization of Windows PCs by the iPad. We love that trend, we think it’s great for us.

With growth among consumers, education (Apple sold 1.5 million iPads to schools last year, which was more than the number of Macs sold to schools), airlines, healthcare companies and a growing list of large enterprise companies in almost every field, Apple has very clearly covered its bases early, making it hard for competitors to beat it in any particular target market.

So can anyone loosen Apple’s grip on tablets? The company’s momentum here doesn’t look like it’s about to diminish any time soon. And let’s not forget it’s very likely that a new iPad model is just around the corner.

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Wu says in his note that Apple looks to be on track to have sold 29.5 million iPhones during its first financial quarter of 2012, up from his firm’s previous prediction of 28 million devices. Wu hasn’t changed Mac or iPad sales expectations, which remain at 5.2 million and 13.5 million units respectively, but the increased iPhone sales lead him to anticipate $38.8 billion in revenue, and $10.34 in earnings per share. Before today, Agee had been modelling $37.7 billion in revenue and $10 EPS.

The numbers are relatively conservative when compared to the bigger picture. Fortune rounded up a collection of analyst expectations ahead of today’s call on Sunday, and found that the average revenue prediction among independent analysts was $43.14 million, with $12.01 EPS and 33.35 million iPhones sold. Among institutional analysts, of which Wu is one, Fortune found average revenue estimates were at $39.23 million, with $10.19 EPS and 30.25 million iPhone sold. Wu’s new numbers will alter those figures slightly upward, since his original, more conservative estimates figured into Fortune’s calculations.

Apple generally makes a point of being conservative with its own estimates of financial performance going forward, but Wu suggests in his note we might not see as modest an outlook as usual. That’s because the iPhone 4S launched in China on Jan. 12, Wu says, and because his supply checks suggest an iPad 3 launch is very near, which could definitely boost next-quarter performance. The 4S launch in China, which sparked riots and caused Apple to shut down physical retail store sales, certainly seems to have been met with strong demand.

We’ll have coverage of Apple’s quarterly earnings and the company’s conference call with executives right here, so check back to see how expectations match up with reality.

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The solution comes in three flavors: 100% Natural, Triple Strength (which also disinfects), and a deep cleaning gel. The bigger packages include a 240 mL bottle to keep at home or the office and a 60 mL bottle (small enough to get through TSA screening) to carry with you. They also include a cloth with a heavy nap good for picking up dust and dirt. The Deep Cleaning gel comes with a smaller, chamois-style cloth.

I started with the Triple Strength solution and cleaned up my screens with a couple spritzes. It features a non-drip formula that’s safe to spray directly on your screen, but old habits die hard, and I still sprayed the solution on to the cloth, wiped it on the screen, and then used the dry side to finish. The results were impressive, but nothing I wasn’t used to with other cleaners.

The real surprise was that after a day or two of use, there was a noticeable difference. I had far less dust on my MacBook Pro screen and far fewer fingerprints on my iPhone compared to usual. I definitely noticed that my iPhone was still looking great after two days. Sure enough, I went back to the packaging and found that the Antec cleaning solution is anti-static and fingerprint resistant. Color me impressed.

The 100% Natural solution has the same anti-static and fingerprint resistant qualities, but forgoes the chemical additives that add non-drip and disinfectant properties to the Triple Strength variety. Both types are available in a few different combo packages, some of which include wipes in individual travel packets.

I found all the above Antec cleaners at Newegg.com at a pretty good discount off retail too. So not only does this stuff work really nice and keep my screen clean for longer than with the competition’s products, it’s actually cheaper too. Love it.

Disclaimer: Antec provided the products for review.

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Sony supplies the current iPhone 4S image sensor, which provides 8-megapixel resolution and improves upon the iPhone 4′s camera in pretty much every regard. The new design, which eliminates a supporting substrate component in favor of a design that layers back-illuminating pixels onto signal processing chips, will make next-gen image processors smaller, faster, more energy-efficient and capable of taking better shots all around, including in low-light situations.

The tech was developed specifically in response to the increasing consumer appetite for high-quality cameras that work well in a number of situations, which has come along with the rise of smartphones. Sony’s new design features built-in signal processing, which is generally handled through an external component. That, combined with specific models using “RGBW Coding,” which allows for a signal-to-noise ratio of much larger sensors using traditional construction methods, makes the new design perfect for slim, carry-anywhere shooters that need to be used both indoors and out — of which the iPhone is a perfect example.

Sony also touts a new “High Dynamic Range (HDR) Movie” function, which would allow cameras to use two different exposures at the same time to optimize the exposure of both subject and background, especially in bright light situations. Apple currently incorporates an HDR mode in the iPhone’s camera app for still shots, but the new Sony tech would allow the same concept to be applied to video, too.

If Apple is looking to improve its camera tech in upcoming iPhones, the new Sony CMOS sensor seems like a natural fit, especially because it’s basically an evolution of tech Apple’s already using that offers space and power savings, unlike more novel competing approaches like the one from Pelican Imaging that would require considerable changes on the software side, for instance. Sony says the chip will enter trial production in March 2012, so it could potentially make its way into an iPhone 5 debuting sometime in the fall, around the same time this year as we saw the iPhone 4S arrive in 2011.

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Apple’s new textbook experience feels familiar; from navigation to the way interactive elements work, the whole thing reminds me a lot of Al Gore’s collaboration with Push Pop Press on Our Choice. If you read my review, you know that’s not a bad thing.

E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth was a particular favorite, thanks to the exciting introduction video that truly increased my interest in the content. I’m not a callous 16-year old, of course, but it must stand a better chance of inspiring some emotion than a plain old hardcover.

What’s inside the book is more exciting too; in landscape mode, titles display information in manageable, bite-sized chunks, dynamically laid out with interspersed graphics. Flipping the iPad to portrait mode organizes information in a more linear fashion, which is easier to digest during crunch sessions, and lays out all graphics in thumbnail mode in a column along the left-hand side.

The search, highlight, notes and bookmark functions all serve to make keeping track of what you’re reading much easier than with print books. You can even use different colored highlights or underline sections to keep track of different things. For the studious type with a complex note-taking system, this will definitely come in handy.

The lesson assignments at the ends of chapters are great, since they provide a quick and easy way to instantly test knowledge retention, with feedback available on-demand. But I did have a problem with other elements.

In both the Life on Earth and Pearson titles I tested, sometimes interactive content didn’t seem clearly flagged. Often I’d tap things that weren’t interactive, assuming they were, and sometimes I’d miss elements that were in fact movies or dynamic graphics. Our Choice did a better job of marking where touching something would produce a result, but that deficiency could be accounted for by early growing pains, since these are the first titles out to use the format.

One thing’s clear: at a maximum of $15 a pop and with the backing of all the major U.S. educational publishers, these new digital textbooks definitely stand ready to gain some traction.

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GE seems a somewhat odd entity to be pioneering Mac deployment, since it still carries associations of being the lumbering giant and paragon of ’80s and ’90s big business it was under Jack Welch. But the company has a now one-year-old project that allows employees to choose either Mac or Windows PCs as their work computer, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it now has about 1,000 Macs in active use, with that number expected to rise.

That’s just a small fraction of GE’s 330,000 total computers, but it’s a start, and the gap will likely narrow as employees become aware of the program; GE hasn’t been trumpeting the news internally yet. For a rough comparison of where future adoption might take the Mac at GE, consider that 10,000 GE employees now use iPhones as their official work device, after the company began supporting them in 2008. There are 50,000 BlackBerry devices in use, but iPhones have made up considerable ground in four years time.

Private industry is one place Apple’s presence is growing, but it’s also having big impact in government. At the level of local government, especially, the idea of using iPads to take over some tasks and replace paper is catching on. Software provider Granicus recently released its iLegislate iPad app targeted specifically at government customers, and told us it’s already in use by over 1,500 governments.

One of iLegislate’s customers, the government of Maricopa, Ariz., says the use of iPads by 15 members of its local government, including the mayor, council members and city directors and managers, has allowed them to increase transparency by making more materials available to the public digitally, and save over $5,000 annually in printing costs, plus more in staff time just assembling print packages. Maricopa’s experience sounds strikingly similar to what we heard about Cornelius, N.C.’s findings following a pilot project of its own using the iPad as a tool for making local government more efficient.

Maricopa has experienced a whopping 4,000 percent growth in population during the past decade, and the iPad, partnered with the Granicus software, is seen by the city as a way to help quickly scale its infrastructure to cope with the expansion. Apple’s iPad holds appeal as a way to quickly cut costs, with a green, future-proof solution that can leverage IT initiatives already in place at governments.

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Here’s why Wu says he thinks the iPad will continue to be a hot-seller in 2012:

We believe this significant refresh will likely help drive higher iPad sales and help further differentiate from arguably the only real competitor in the market, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and not to mention the myriad of Android offerings out there. We are currently modeling 48 million iPad shipments for calendar 2012.

DisplaySearch has already said it estimates 48 million iPad display panels were shipped in 2011. Now, display shipments doesn’t necessarily equal iPad shipments (owing to repairs, replacements, defective stock, etc.) but Apple’s own reported numbers put its iPad sales for its financial year in 2011 at around 32.4 million. An increase of 16 million would certainly be in line with the iPad’s sales growth between 2010, when it sold 14.8 million worldwide, and 2011, but if Apple’s quarterly sales continue to gain steam the way they did in 2011, we could indeed see much bigger increases, especially if the iPad 2 remains available as a low-cost option.

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