According to our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, there have been significant developments and announcements that will boost HTML5 capabilities in mobile phones next year. Key to this are Tizen OS and Firefox OS, led by companies such as Telefonica, Qualcomm, Firefox (Mozilla), Qualcomm, Intel, Huawei, ZTE and others. Firefox OS handsets will emerge in Latin America in 2013 and help to bring HTML5 functionality to mass-market prepaid users. How will this affect Android? How big is the HTML5 phone market going to be in five years time? More analysis is available to clients in this published report.

Sprint, USA's third largest carrier confirmed today its in advance talks with Softbank regarding a potential substantial investment by Softbank in Sprint. This particular investment would mean Softbank could gain major control over Sprint in USA.

But there are some key questions this would raise from devices perspective : What does this mean to the handset OEMs? How will this development affect the handset portfolio at Sprint?

Sprint has been the third largest handset supplier/seller in USA according to out latest Handset Country Share Tracker research. More than half of the handset sales is dominated by Apple and Samsung at this moment, however, Sprint has a history of embracing Taiwanese (e.g. HTC) and Japanese (e.g. Kyocera, Sanyo) OEMs granting a generous shelf-space. Sprint is the only US carrier where Japanese OEMs command more than 10% sales share. If Softbank's investment in Sprint goes through then we could see this share to possibly increase further and remark the entry of Softbank's current various Japanese OEM partners such as Panasonic, Sharp and Fujitsu in this important high-value US market. Thus, this is certainly good news for Japanese OEMs which have struggled in past to successfully expand beyond Japanese shores.

LTE smartphones

As expected LTE smartphones have dominated the first day of the biggest US tech show.

AT&T seems to have launched the greatest number of devices, including the first Windows Phone LTE handsets:  the Nokia 900 -- which you can read about in greater depth in our dedicated blog post -- and the HTC Titan 2, which has a 4.7-inch display and a 16 megapixel camera.

On top of that there was the first Sony LTE phone -- the Xperia ion -- and the first Pantech LTE handset -- the value-oriented Burst. AT&T also announced the US launch of an LTE-compatible Samsung Galaxy Note, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S 2 Skyrocket HD and the eco-friendly Samsung Exhilarate.

Meanwhile Sprint announced a couple of Android phones to run on its future LTE network -- the Galaxy Nexus and the eco-friendly (possibly a bit of a trend emerging there) LG Viper 4G LTE. And Verizon unveiled the LTE-enabled DROID 4 by Motorola, which has a slide-out qwerty keyboard.

Smart TVs

It wouldn’t be CES if there wasn’t a new generation of smart TVs on display. Samsung has evolved its offering with new content, new UIs, and even the ability to upgrade the TV’s processor, while Sony hasn’t given up on Google TV, and has launched a couple of media players featuring motion-sensitive controller, based on Google TV 2.0.

The traditional consumer electronics giants may have more competition than ever in this market, however. Lenovo has launched a smart TV running the latest version of Android -- 4.0 -- as part of its broader connected device strategy, while Yahoo augmented its Connected TV offering and Nuance launched a voice interface technology called Dragon TV.

Kinect for Windows

Lastly, Microsoft is swimming against the current -- from the TV back to the PC -- by announcing the launch of its Kinect gesture interface for Windows, possibly inspired by the many ‘unofficial’ initiatives already undertaken by the independent technology community.