Peek, a New York mobile start-up, has begun selling TwitterPeek, a new device for posting and reading Twitter updates.

TwitterPeek became available on Amazon (AMZN) and Peek’s Web site Tuesday. Its $100 price includes a full keyboard, always-on tweet delivery and nationwide Internet coverage, plus six months of service. After that, service costs $8 a month, but there is no contract. An alternate lifetime plan, without monthly charges, costs $200.

Peek sells other handheld devices that aren’t cellphones, including the Peek Classic and Peek Pronto, which are designed for emailing and text-messaging but don’t make calls. It’s pitching TwitterPeek as a way to “unleash the thrill of Twitter on the go,” particularly for Twitter users without smart phones.

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The medical waistband is the latest front in the battle among smart-phone makers for the business customer.

Pagers have long reigned in hospitals, where they are prized for their dependability. But with doctors treating more patients and hospitals facing pressure to be more efficient, companies like Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) see an opportunity to peddle their devices.

Last month, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, Calif., started a trial with Apple and Epic Systems Corp., a provider of health-care information systems, to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone.

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Fancy new smart phones and laptops may generate more buzz, but the desktop PC remains the workhorse of the office. Bosses who outfit staffers with mobile devices, however, may be able to wring more work out of them, according to a new Forrester (FORR) study.

The research firm surveyed more than 2,000 employees at companies with 100 or more workers to find how they use technology. Three-quarters use desktop computers, and two-thirds are anchored to their desks for at least four hours a day.

Laptops were only available to one in three computer-using workers, though this varied by profession–47 percent of business employees had them, compared with only 17 percent of retail and manufacturing workers. A mere 11 percent of workers owned smart phones, though that percentage was higher for salespeople and marketers.

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Between documenting expenses and processing credit cards from just about anywhere in the U.S., smartphone applications have changed the way many small businesses operate. Now, more firms are turning to these apps to enhance the way customers interact with their products and services–and even boost their bottom lines.

“People nowadays want everything to be at their fingertips, and if companies are not finding ways to provide these tools [they] will soon see drop-off from their customers,” says Jennifer Shaheen, a small business technology consultant in White Plains, N.Y.

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TomTom’s new iPhone app is similar in many ways to the company’s personal navigation devices, but the software’s lack of multitasking ability and smaller screen size are a few ways in which it’s different, says Tom Murray, its vice president of marketing development.

When asked whether the emergence of navigations apps–including TomTom’s own–spells the end of standalone devices, he says, “We’re trying to make TomTom navigational systems available to people across all platforms that are important to consumers.”

Devices represent 80 percent of TomTom’s current business, and while that may shift as smart phones become a bigger part of the market, “we continue to see a robust demand for [portable navigation devices] going forward,” Mr. Murray says. “This is an opportunity to grow, not a threat to us, especially in the short term.”

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Very interesting tidbit today from Macworld U.K., which found a China Unicom (CHU) Web page with information on the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. Macworld notes that the information, which is in Chinese, is apparently part of a list of smartphones that could theoretically be supported by the 3G network China Unicom is building. The Macworld story notes that the page appears only on the Web site for the company’s Shanghai branch, and did not say specifically that the iPhone would be offered by China Unicom. MacRumors.com used Google (GOOG) to translate the page, which appears to mostly be a list of iPhone specs.

Does it mean China Unicom will sell iPhones once they complete their 3G network? Unclear. But interesting, nonetheless.

AAPL today is up 82 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $108.48.

Update: Speculation on Apple cutting a deal with China Unicom has been floating around for a while now, and perhaps for good reason. In a note published last month, Riedel Research, which focuses on emerging markets, noted that China Unicom will launch their WCDMA 3G network on May 17. In an interview this afternoon, Reidel proprietor David Riedel notes that a high-level delegation from China Unicom was in Cupertino this month to meet with Apple execs.

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New laptops that boot up in 30 seconds? Too slow for me. Five seconds? Better, but what I want is a machine that’s ready in about a second, just like my smartphone.

I’m fully aware that expressing any impatience with a computer’s boot time invites derision. When the entire globe is engulfed in an economic crisis, measuring the seconds required to start different computers may seem the most trivial of concerns.

Still, I’m not alone. Unhappiness with boot times, which commonly run 45 to 60 seconds, is shared by many computer users, as reflected in much online discussion of the issue.

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Global mobile phone unit sales grew a disappointing five percent in the third quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. It was the weakest quarter for the industry since 2002. The firm noted that four of the top six vendors grew at a five percent rate or less; Apple (AAPL) and Samsung outpaced the market.

• Nokia (NOK) shipped 118 million handsets, up five percent. The company lost market share in all regions, with smartphones “a major weak spot.”
• Samsung shipped 52 million handsets, up 22 percent. Its market share reached an all-time high at 17 percent, up from three percent in 1998. The company was strong in North America and Western Europe, weaker in emerging markets.
• Sony Ericsson (SNE, ERIC) shipped 25.7 million handsets, down one percent. With a five percent sequential increase, the company passed LG and Motorola (MOT) to become the the third largest company in the industry by units.

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Faint praise seems the order of the day when dipping into depressed stock prices. Needham & Co.’s Charlie Wolf this morning upgraded shares of Research in Motion (RIMM) from “Underperform” to “Hold,” writing that the fall in price from $105 in July to $60 and change today fairly reflects potential for slowing of sales of BlackBerrys to consumers in the quarter ending next month. (Remember that RIM shares traded at $130 as recently as August.) Wolf says sales of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone appear to be “materially higher than initial forecasts” and so couches RIM’s problems in the context of Apple’s encroachments on the smartphone business.

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There is a shortage of iPhones in Apple’s (AAPL) stores in the United States. And there is a surplus of frenzied speculation about what this means. Many wonder whether Apple is closing out of its existing stock in order to clear the way for new models, possibly with the ability to connect to faster 3G networks.

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