Global mobile phone sales reached 286.1 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 6.1 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales were a bright spot for the industry, surpassing 40 million units, a 27 percent increase from the same period last year, representing the fastest growing segment of the mobile devices market.

Microsoft and Nokia announced an alliance on Wednesday to make Microsoft Office software available on Nokia’s Symbian devices.

The software and cell phone companies said Nokia will start offering Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on its smartphones next year, followed by other Office applications and related software and services in the future.

The global mobile phone market saw another quarter of year-over-year decline in the second quarter of 2009, shipping a total of 269.6 million units, down 10.8 percent from 302.2 million units in 2Q08, according to IDC.

The second quarter results are an improvement from the 17.2 percent decrease in the first quarter, but challenges from the economic crisis remain a factor to watch.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman is featured in a video from Nokia’s IdeasProject.com. He talks about new products being created from the social data that is available on the Internet.

Global mobile phone sales totaled 269.1 million units in the first quarter of 2009, a 9.4 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2008, according to Gartner.

Smartphone sales surpassed 36.4 million units, a 12.7 percent increase from the same period last year.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, global sales of smartphones reached 38.1 million units, an increase of 3.7 percent over the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Gartner.

Worldwide sales of smartphone for 2008 reached 139.3 million, up 13.9 percent compared to 2007.

Global mobile phone sales increased 6 percent in 2008 over the previous year while sales declined 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter due to the economic downturn, according to Gartner.

Worldwide mobile phone sales reached 1.22 billion in 2008, up from 1.15 billion in 2007.

Nokia and eBay-owned VoIP service Skype announced a deal today. Skype will be integrated into Nokia devices, starting with the N97 series.

Microsoft is set to launch its new My Phone service online at the upcoming Mobile World Congress wireless show starting February 16.

My Phone syncs information on a mobile phone to a storage space on a Web site hosted by Microsoft. The cloud service allows mobile users to manage contacts, appointments, text messages, photos and videos.  Most phones that run Windows Mobile 6 operating system are compatible with My Phone Service.

In San Francisco last night, Six Apart (who recently launched data portability initiative Motion) hosted a roundtable to discuss the future of activity stream standards. In attendance were people from Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, Nokia, Plaxo, Comcast, and others.

Nokia announced today that it is set to introduce its new music offering Comes with Music in the UK on October 16.

Nokia said Carphone Warehouse will be the exclusive retailer in Britain for the first Comes with Music model, which will sell for $230 and includes a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic handset.

Nokia said today that it is launching a new mobile phone music service in the UK, called Comes With Music.

Global sales of mobile phones hit close to 305 million units in the second quarter of 2008, an 11.8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner.

Sales of mobile phones in the saturated markets of Western Europe and North America had a slight rebound after a shaky start. Western Europe reached close to 42 million units and North America exceeded 44 million units in the second quarter of 2008.

Yesterday’s news that Nokia acquired location based social network Plazes, was worthy only of making our Pilgrim’s Picks.

If you connect the acquisition and investment dots, you wind up following Acuity Mobile to Navteq to Nokia.  And since Acuity deals in mobile marketing, Navteq works with maps, and Nokia’s all about cell phones, this could indicate that some pretty big companies are growing more interested in location-based advertising.

Nokia has launched a preview version of its delayed N-Gage mobile gaming service for N81 owners with a full launch on the way.

Now available in "First Access" form, Nokia is inviting users to reserve their player names, download the N-Gage application, try and purchase games, and offer feedback on how the service works.

I’ve been an avid Mac user for many years, since about 1996, and actually that’s when I started working on the web.

If you’re interested in using video in your communication plans but don’t really know where to start – what equipment to get or what software you’ll need – three excellent articles published today on Journalism.co.uk will give you some clear pointers.

Nokia is a Global leader in their market, no questioning that. So, perhaps their move to make "greener" more environmentally sound decisions in their business processes will spread to others… indeed they are a good role model for action.