Oh, Apple. I originally brushed off your iPhone for its lack of (legitimately) addable applications, and now you’re the only ones with the right idea in mind.

Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey expects Apple’s iPhone App Store, which should be coming sometime near the end of June on the back of the iPhone 2.0 software, to play a huge part in tripling the iPhone userbase to 30 million users by the end of 2010.

That’s not too crazy of a prediction, by any means. With the iPhone userbase already on its way to an estimated 9 million users by the end of 2008, and the 3G version imminent, it’s definitely doable. Factor in the enterprise features also coming in the 2.0 software, and the prediction might actually end up a bit on the low end.

Of course, by 2010, we’ll be on the 5th version of the iPhone, which will be offered in black/red and come preloaded with Bono wallpapers.

Research In Motion (RIM), the company that brought us the BlackBerry, will be meeting with Indian official tomorrow over security issues raised by government agencies. India fears that e-mails sent by the BlackBerry can’t be traced or intercepted. This creates security risks for the government. For years, India has been a target for terrorists over issues like the ownership of Kashmir.

Indian Telecoms Minister Andimuthu Raja announced last week that RIM had assured the government that it would come out with a solution within two months. But last Friday, RIM said in a customer update that the company does not have a copy of the customer’s encryption key and would be unable to accommodate the Indian government’s request.

India has 114,000 BlackBerry subscribers. Services are offered by Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar and BPL Mobile.

H&R Block, the tax preparation company, has teamed up with Metavante and Monitise Americas to provide Emerald Prepaid MasterCard cardholders access to mobile phone text messaging to check their balances and receive account reload mobile alerts.

“While the Emerald Card has proven to be a safe, lower cost and convenient way for customers to receive their tax refunds, we are continuing to explore ways we can provide improved account access and support to our clients,” said Kevin Morrison, H&R Block’s assistant vice president of card programs. “By piloting the addition of text message and balance inquiry functionality through Monitise Americas and Metavante, we will be able to continue to learn how our Emerald Card can build loyalty while meeting the specific support needs of our tax clients – giving them another reason to choose H&R Block year after year.”

In addition to text messaging balance inquiry, the Emerald Card offers clients other features, including: Payroll direct deposit; connection to line of credit; access to a savings account; link to money transfer services and nationwide ATM access and point-of-sale purchasing wherever MasterCard debit cards are accepted.

This year, H&R Block issued 2.6 million cards. Some customers continue to use the card by loading their account with payroll direct deposit and other funds.

Skyfire Labs Inc., makers of the “game-changing” Skyfire mobile browser, announced today that they have raised $13 million in Series B funding. This round of funding is led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and includes previous investors Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures.

This brings the total funding up to $17.8 million, following a $4.8 million Series A round in June of last year. As part of the deal, Jake Seid, Lightspeed’s Managing Director, will be joining Skyfire’s Board of Directors.

Skyfire is a mobile browser which offsets a good amount of the page rendering workload to a server, freeing up the handset’s CPU and RAM to crunch things most mobile browsers leave out — namely, Flash and AJAX. Check out the demo video here.

This additional funding places further pressure on Skyfire’s main browsing rival, Opera Mobile. While Skyfire is (tentatively) free, Opera Mobile goes for 24 bucks. With Opera Mobile 9.5 facing delays, a free alternative with rich media support is beginning to look mighty tempting.

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QChat is a CDMA upgrade to Nextel’s iDEN Push-to-talk network, which increases connection performance while allowing interoperability with the legacy iDEN network. The service was originally rumored to be set to roll out nationally back in April, but hit a few delays with unknown causes.

It looks like whatever issues were causing the delays have been worked out - Sprint’s QChat PTT replacement is finally set to go live nationally next month. According above Brightpoint distribution chart, the Sanyo PRO-200 ($249.99), PRO-700 ($269.99), Samsung Z400 ($299.99), and LG LX400 ($279.99) — all QChat launch devices — should hit the shelves on June 15th. As always, early adopters are going to have to eat the higher costs.

[Via Phonenews]

Nobody likes to be sued - including T-Mobile. Getting sued by lots of people who are all mad for the same reason is even worse. To avoid this, T-mobile plugged arbitration clauses into their service agreements to keep customers from filing class action lawsuits, instead requiring that legal matters are settled out of court. It’s a common thing; most contracts having something along those lines tucked away inside. It doesn’t seem to be working too well for T-Mobile, though.

This morning, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from T-Mobile to nullify 3 class action lawsuits aimed in their direction. While federal law lends to the enforcement of arbitration clauses, a number of states (including those where the suits were filed) have their own laws that allow courts to refuse class action suit related clauses. T-Mobile’s lawyers claimed that the federal laws preempt the state laws — but, in this case, the Supreme Court says otherwise, allowing the cases to proceed.

[Via AP]

On the market for a blasé upgrade from your RAZR V3? Verizon’s new Motorola W755 is just for you.

As it’s yet another Moto clamshell, there’s nothing too exciting about it. Touch sensitive external buttons for controlling music, V Cast, and support for a handful of music formats (AAC, AMR NB, MIDI, MP3 and WMA V9) — all of which are made useless by the dongle-necessitating 2.5 mm headset jack. It comes in two flavors: “black slate” or purple — because nothing says royalty like a lower-mid-range Motorola.

The W755 should have hit the shelves this morning, and runs $69.99 after contract and rebate.

When most people think of computer hacking and viruses, they worry about an attack on their PC. But with the advent of mobile phones that can connect to the internet, these types of troubles may be coming to a handset near you. The market for protection programs that battle this is still quite small, despite the growth of 3G devices.

Symantec Corp Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem thinks that the security market is worth a few hundred million dollars a year.

“It is growing. But given the number of handsets, the number of smartphones, you would think it would be growing at a much higher rate,” Salem said. “I can’t give you an exact number but it is not as fast as you might think.”

In Japan, where the 3G revolution has taken off, sophisticated security products are available for mobile devices. NTT DoCoMo offers software customers can download but they have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use the software.

Currently, most hackers aren’t interested in breaking into cell phones because there are such a variety of operating systems. Unlike creating programs to break into Microsoft’s Windows, which is the operating system for the majority of the world’s personal computers, hackers don’t want to spend their time breaking into an operating system with a relatively limited populous.

“If you’re a bad guy looking to make money off of somebody, you want to spend the least amount of effort to do that. The quickest path to riches is usually the fast one,” said Andrew Jaquith, a security analyst with The Yankee Group.

If open source codes like Android becomes popular in the near future, security issues may become more important. Cellphone security is a niche that needs to be filled as 3G connects us to the Internet while on the go.

Not too long ago, I found myself stuck in a ridiculously long queue at a Verizon store. With nothing better to do, I started trying to listen to the reasons people had for being there. It was mainly “Oh man, the screen on my phone cracked all by itself, thats gotta be under warranty right?” type stuff, but one conversation, between a customer that looked like a lumberjack and a sales guy, interested me. To paraphrase:

Lumberjack: “I’d like to return this phone.”
Sales guy: “Why are you returning it?”
Lumberjack: “It does too much.”
Sales guy: “..Too much? Can’t you just ignore the stuff you don’t need?”
Lumberjack: “No. There is too much stuff, and it makes the menus confusing. I just want a phone and an address book. Do you have any phone like that?”
Sales guy: “I don’t think so. I think this is our simplest model.”

For those of us with technology wrapped around nearly every aspect of our lives, it’s easy to forget that there are a lot of people who feel the same way Lumberjack does. More “advanced” features are becoming standard with each device that hits the shelves, to the point that even the most basic phones may be a bit too much to handle for Joe “What the hell is a 3G?” Schmoe

AT&T and Pantech are looking to cater to this audience of people who simply want less, with the release of the AT&T Breeze phone ($50 bucks after contract and rebate). The phone is aimed at those who look at modern cell phone UIs and have a panic attack, with all but the most utilized features tucked away. It also packs in a few features to address common complaints from an older generation of users — large fonts, single purpose speed dial and hot keys, a loud speakerphone, and large buttons aim to make the experience a bit smoother for those with decreased vision.

The Japanese government is so concerned that children are spending too much time with Internet-linking cell phones that it is warning parents and schools to limit their use. Most mobile phones in Japan are 3G, which allows high-speed Internet access.

Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the new initiative, said elementary and junior high school students spend long hours exchanging mobile e-mails and suffer other negative effects from mobile phone overuse. Some students have even been victims of cyberspace crimes.

“Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought,” he said. “In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy.”

One fad among school aged children in Japan is “the 30 minute rule.” If a child doesn’t respond to an e-mail within 30 minutes, that child becomes the target for teasing by others.

An education reform panel is asking cell phone manufactures to develop a child friendly device. Such a phone would only allow voice communication and GPS tracking, to help further a child’s safety.