Top 10 Mobile Stories of 2010 around the globe!!

We really have to stop calling these things "cell phones" soon. Looking back, 2010 may be the year the cell phone was finally overtaken by the mobile device, the smart handheld, the itty computer—whatever. Everybody has 'em, and the mobile world is just heating up. Yeah, sure, we're PCMag. Personal computer magazine. Mobile phones are the personal computers of the 2010s, and this year helped show what's coming. Here are my top 10 US mobile trends of 2010.

10. Wireless Consolidation (Or Not)
I have nightmares about the U.S. becoming a wireless duopoly, with Verizon and AT&T owning every American soul and vaguely competing just enough to keep an inattentive FCC happy. Sprint and T-Mobile mostly treaded water in 2010, but I've been really happily surprised by scrappy little MetroPCS, US Cellular, and Cricket, which have gone from being lowest-common-denominator, purely regional carriers to lively specialists in budget 4G (on Metro's part), great customer service (on US Cellular's) and cheap smartphones (on Cricket's.) I'm hoping the little guys will keep innovating, growing and maybe even merging, offering a fifth nationwide player to replace late, lamented Alltel and keep the big guys on their toes.

9. Motorola's Back
Two years ago, Motorola looked practically dead; the inventors of the modern cell phone had simply fainted away under a pile of repetitive RAZRs. Yeah, sure, it was selling a lot of cheap dumb phones, but innovation looked over and done with. But then Qualcomm's Sanjay Jha took over the company, turning it into a premiere Android smartphone shop, and Motorola leveraged a strong relationship with Verizon to bring out the Droid in late 2009. In 2010, the Motorola Droid X and Droid 2 were two of our top cell phone reviews by traffic, showing that Motorola is back to being a major force in the mobile world.

8. Blackberry Lights a Torch in a Dark Hallway
Microsoft wasn't the only major mobile manufacturer to struggle in 2010. BlackBerry has watched its market share slide, slide, slide in the U.S., backstopped by massive growth in emerging countries - but I'm talking about the top 10 mobile stories in the USA, OK? The new BlackBerry 6 OS is effective but underwhelming, and the flagship Torch has sold decently but not spectacularly. RIM just needs to stay alive until it can assemble a bunch of recent acquisitions—OS company QNX, browser company Torch Mobile, UI company TAT—into a spectacular new operating system that will debut on its PlayBook tablet in 2011.

7. Apple and AT&T, Together ... Forever?
Every month, "iPhone on Verizon" rumors. Every month, no iPhone on Verizon. 2010 started with some pundits positively proclaiming that the iPad would appear on a carrier other than AT&T, and lo and behold: it was an AT&T exclusive. The iPhone 4? An AT&T exclusive. But late this year, as Android's growth seemed to start making Apple sweat, we began to see cracks in the alliance: Apple quietly blessed Verizon, allowing a somewhat awkward iPad+MiFi solution, and Verizon executives started using indirect language to pave the way for more Apple products to appear on its network. Maybe 2011 will be the year the dam finally breaks.

6. Windows Phone 7
Several of our top mobile stories by traffic were about Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's new OS broke big after the company basically spent a year playing dead in mobile (including with the dead-on-arrival Microsoft Kin), showing you really can't count anything out in a market this fast moving. In six weeks after launch, Microsoft shipped 1.5 million phones to its launch partners; the company has also slapped down half a billion dollars in marketing money. The new OS is a fresh start, with an interface that looks like none other and a more than 50-50 chance of becoming a real, consistent player.

5. iPhone 4 Antennagate
The iPhone 4's antenna problems made Apple do a very, very rare thing: admit the company did something wrong. That's like dogs turning into cats, or the world spinning backwards. I remember testing the "death grip" over and over again late at night, surprised to see that yes, the iPhone 4's antenna had a bug in it. And yet, if you look at the iPhone's spectacular sales statistics, startlingly few people cared in the end; it turns out iPhones have been lousy voice phones for so long that people don't expect solid call quality from an iPhone. The device's spectacular camera, incredible apps, and myriad other powers more than make up for its voice failings.

4. The iPad (And a Tiny Little Bit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab)
2010 was supposed to be the year of the tablet. It was the year of the iPad. The iPad singlehandedly created, maintained, and triumphed over the mobile tablet category, joined for most of the year by a worthless Island of Misfit Toys that didn't provide much competition at all. Late in the year Samsung brought out the first real Android-powered iPad competitor, but found themselves stabbed in the back by Google, which said that the "real" version of Android for tablets won't be out until 2011. We're going to see literally dozens of tablets at CES 2011, so perhaps next year will be everyone else's chance.

3. The Beginnings of 4G
4G became mainstream in 2010. I should probably say "4G" became mainstream, as the carriers announcing fourth-generation networks did so without the blessing of the International Telecommunications Union, the arbiter of these things, until the ITU finally buckled and gave up. 4G, to U.S. carriers, means wireless networks finally fast enough to go mano-a-mano with wired broadband. But it doesn't seem, yet, to mean radical new uses or prices for those networks. Verizon's speedy network is expensive, while Sprint's affordable 4G network is less reliable and T-Mobile's has few devices able to take advantage of its maximum speeds. Now that many carriers have 4G, they have to use 2011 to make consumers understand why they should start buying 4G devices instead of 3G gadgets.

2. The Rise of Android
According to our traffic counting software, the top four most-read cell phone reviews this year were all Android powered smartphones. One of the top finishers may shock you: it's the LG Optimus S, an extremely well-done, low-end phone for Sprint. But the Optimus S's popularity shows the strength of Android: the operating system was as successful on low-end models as on high-end phones like the Motorola Droid X (which was traffic-grabber number two), and in 2010 it became the market-share-leading smartphone OS to beat.

1. Smartphones Hit a Tipping Point
Sometime in 2010, everyone started asking me about smartphones. According to ComScore, more than 25 percent of American mobile phone owners now have smartphones, and they're no longer high-priced devices. Every carrier has free smartphones, and Cricket, Virgin, and MetroPCS are selling smar phones with low monthly rates. I think we've hit the mobile tipping point in the U.S. where most people are no longer looking for voice communication devices; they're looking for mobile pocket computers that happen to make phone calls. More than anything else, I think this trend will define what we're writing and speaking about in 2011.

Think I got it right? Think I got it wrong? Incensed I didn't include anything from either Nokia or Palm? Tell me in the comments below. For more, see the slideshow above. By: Sascha Segan