Recently, Palm (PALM) came under fire when programmer Joey Hess discovered the Pre’s smartphone OS was sending users’ GPS locations back to Palm on a daily basis. Although this information was disclosed in the company’s privacy policy, the majority of the phone’s owners were unaware. The incident raised questions about consumer privacy and the extent to which both handset makers and developers were gathering data on mobile users.

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Researchers believe the mobile phone system makes youngsters less thoughtful and more prone to making mistakes elsewhere in life.

Hitting a few keys and then seeing the desired word appear in full trains children to be fast but inaccurate when doing other things, according to scientists.

They warn that the effects of this could have repercussions on a whole generation, especially as more than nine out of 10 16 year-olds now own a handset as well as 40 per cent of primary schoolchildren.

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Strength in the NAND flash memory chip market, and from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone in particular, should help SanDisk (SNDK) beat expectations when it reports Q2 earnings when it reports tomorrow, according to a note today from Stifel Nicolaus analyst Patrick Ho.

Ho doesn’t formally cover SanDisk: he’s more interested in the implications for some of his coverage companies, including Teradyne (TER) and Verigy (VRGY), both of which he rates “Buy.” Those two companies make chip test equipment.

“We believe the company (and the overall NAND flash market) has seen a pickup in handset demand, as well as continued strength in many Apple-based products (including the iPhone 3G S),” writes Ho.

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Two new surveys on cellphone use show that Americans love their handsets, possibly to the detriment of their spouses and social lives.

According to a survey of 645 U.S. women commissioned by shoe retailer Zappos.com and payment service Bill Me Later, 31 percent of respondents ranked their phone or PDA as “most important” in managing their work and home lives, ahead of their significant other and hired help.

One reason is that it helps them bridge professional and personal responsibilities.

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Motorola (MOT) shares are getting a boost from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Tai Liani, who this morning raised his rating on the stock to Buy from Neutral, setting a price target of $9, up from $7.

He cites four reasons for the upgrade, most of which boil down to a belief that the company is on the verge of staging a turnaround in its troubled handset business:

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Is Motorola (MOT) planning to hold a fire sale?

Oppenheimer analyst Ittai Kidron observes in a research note that the company continues to plan the spin-off of its crumbling handset business sometime next year. But he says checks suggest the company is in the middle of strategic planning process that could lead to other asset sales as well over the next 12 months.

In particular, he thinks the company is considering narrowing its focus to the government and enterprise markets, and gradually transitioning its carrier and cable businesses. He says the company is “in advanced discussions” with Huawei on a sale of all or parts of its wireless infrastructure business, and that it is also reviewing the possible sale of its set-top box business.

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Is Motorola (MOT) going to dust off its plan to spin off its handset business as a separate public company?

Oppenheimer analyst Ittai Kidron thinks so. In a research note this morning, Kidron asserted that “management could revisit the planning process for the Mobile Device spin-off in the near future, which would signal growing confidence in the upcoming [handset] portfolio and raise the likelihood of unlocking the unit’s value.”

Kidron today repeated his Outperform rating on the stock, and increased his target price to $7, from $5. He said the company is not likely to miss estimates for Q1, and adds that there is even “a small chance for upside as both handset ASP and margins could be better than expected.”

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Unable to get the attention of the wireless carriers, Dell (DELL) has decided to enter the mobile phone market by selling its wares direct through retailers, according to Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar. The analyst writes that the carriers have decided to pass on Dell’s handset, “citing a non-compelling product with a roadmap that lags competition.”

Kumar is not optimistic about Dell’s chances for success with that approach, asserting that the company is “facing a stacked deck with little experience on how to play this game.”

Kumar wonders whether consumers will want a phone that the carriers consider to be not good enough to sell directly. “Consumers are used to subsidized handsets and are not used to paying full price,” he notes, and assumes that retailers will provide prime shelf space for Dell’s phones.

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Shopping on cellphones–long a dream among e-commerce companies–is not yet a mass-market phenomenon. But some new tools could help change that picture.

Amazon.com (AMZN) Thursday unveiled free software for BlackBerry handsets (trackball models only, please), that allow users to browse for products, read reviews, and buy on the go–just like a version for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone that came out in December.

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Are things picking up at Nokia (NOK)?

Maybe… or at least, they seem to be getting worse at a decelerating rate.

RBC Capital’s Mark Sue this morning repeated his Outperform rating on the stock and lifted his price target to $16, from $12, asserting that the company’s operating margins in mobile device many have bottomed. He also contends the company will see some benefits in the first quarter from inventory restocking, lifting his unit forecast for the quarter to 90 million from 87 million. “It’s been the most volatile global handset quarter since we can remember, yet the shock to the system seems to be dissipating,” he writes. Sue still expects global units to be down 15 percent this year, but asserts that the rate of decline appears to be slowing.

Sue adds that “it’s bad out there, but not as bad as feared, implying the multiple [on NOK shares] may expand from trough levels.” He says the company is seeing “encouraging trends” in Asia, in particular in China and India, while Europe “seems to be stabilizing.”

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Apple (AAPL) now finds itself where everyone else in the mobile handset business wanted to be 15 years ago. Large companies full of clever people devoted years of planning and expenditure to fail to get here. If the iPhone continues to flourish–then both rival manufacturers and the networks have to tear up some long established strategies. For the established handset competition, if Apple takes the lucrative high end, that leaves them scrambling around for gimmicks in a cutthroat market that’s increasingly low margin. For the networks, they’ll need to find devices that people actually want–or pray that Apple drops its carrier exclusivity policy and partners with any network that wants to sell its gear. So how did someone with no track record in a notoriously difficult business find itself walking away with the laurels? What can explain this paradox?

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Bold call this morning–no pun intended–from ThinkEquity analyst Mike Burton, who launched coverage of Research In Motion (RIMM) with a Sell rating and a $30 price target.

Burton writes in a research note that he thinks RIMM is a great company, but that its margins are going to get squeezed by increasing competition, and that it needs to invest more to expand. “Some of this has been recognized by the deterioration of the stock,” he writes, “but we believe there is still significant downside to current earnings estimates.”

Burton says the handset sector “has always been brutal where distribution is sometimes as important as the quality of ones product portfolio, but it is also facing a new wave of competition in its core market in QWERTY smartphones.”

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Shares of companies in the mobile phone sector are staging a furious rally today, with many companies up by 10 percent or more, on some hints from the industry that demand might be bottoming. Here are a few factors contributing to the more bullish tone:

• Texas Instruments (TXN) last night narrowed its Q1 guidance range. The post-earnings conference call was hardly bullish, but TXN VP for investor relations Ron Slaymaker did say that the company’s wireless business is doing a little better than expected, and that “the handset number came up a little bit relative to our initial expectation.”
• According to a research note from Raymond James analyst Todd Koffman, executives from RF Micro Devices (RFMD) speaking at the Raymond James conference in Orlando yesterday said that handset demand has strengthened in the current quarter, with February stronger than January, and January stronger than December. The company indicated that it expects rapid improvement in capacity utilization, which was at just 25 percent in early March.

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InterDigital (IDCC) shares are heading lower in early trading after the company posted weaker-than-expected Q4 profits.

For the quarter, the wireless technology company posted revenue of $58.7 million, ahead of the Street at $57.4 million. But profits of nine cents a share were short of the Street at 16 cents. The company said recurring revenue from existing licensing agreements was $51.4 million.

IDCC said it expects recurring revenue of $69 million to $71 million for the first quarter, including nearly $20 million from a licensing agreement with Samsung, offset by the loss of $1.1 million from a customer who exited the handset business.

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How bad is the market for cellphones? Really bad. Worse than really bad.

RBC Capital’s Mark Sue this morning cut his Q1 forecast for global handset unit demand to 230 million, from 248 million, which would mean a sequential drop of 25 percent. For the full year, Sue now expects handset units to drop 18 percent. “Despite some inventory clearing at carriers and distributors, magnified deterioration in developed markets and sharp declines in emerging markets means global handsets may contract more than dire predictions,” he writes in a research note.

Sue thinks that Nokia (NOK) “may feel the brunt of the weakness this quarter,” given that it will also likely lose some market share. He cut his unit forecast for Nokia for Q1 to 85 million units, down from 93 million; that would be off 25 percent from the 113 million the company reported in Q4.

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