Could iPhone users benefit from the increasing price wars over wireless data plans? Giant mobile carrier AT&T is speaking out as a number of analyst suggest iPhone service price drops are inevitable.

AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega told tech site Engadget the No. 1 wireless carrier is in frequent contact with Apple on how to improve the iPhone’s performance.

“We communicate with Apple and say, you know, if we tweak this it would work better,” he said. “They’ve been very good about working with us,” de la Vega said, describing Apple’s response.

Taiwan-based cell phone maker HTC Wednesday was credited as the source of 80 percent of mobile phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.

“We have sold more than 40 million HTC Windows mobile phones around the world,” HTC CEO Peter Chou reportedly told a Mobile World Conference audience.

HTC, along with producing phones carrying its own brand, makes handsets for carriers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone and Orange.

Cell phone maker Samsung Tuesday added its name to the growing list of manufacturers joining the Android bandwagon. The company said it would unveil at least three handsets based on the open-source Google mobile phone platform in 2009.

In a Reuters interview, Samsung’s product strategy chief, Won-Pyo Hong, said ‘at least three’ Android phones would be produced, the first appearing in the later half of this year. Previously, the No. 2 cell phone maker had said its Android phones would appear in the Spring.

Although the company released few details, talk has surrounded Sprint and T-Mobile as the handset’s U.S. carriers.

HTC Monday unveiled its Magic handset, the second smartphone powered by Google’s Android software. The phone also is the first Google phone to sport a virtual keyboard, striking closer to home for the Apple iPhone.

Although the model does away with a physical keyboard, the Magic retains its 3.2-inch touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, as well as 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS for access options.

Vodafone will be the first carrier to offer the Magic. The carrier won an exclusive deal in the UK, Germany and Spain and a non-exclusive pact in Italy. France’s SFR will also sell the phone.

Om Malik, a notable technology blogger, gave up on his iPhone Wednesday.

Citing ongoing and ultimately insurmountable frustration with AT&T’s network, Malik decided to ditch the iPhone and opt for a T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8900 for email and SMS. “I also signed up for a plain-vanilla voice service from Verizon Wireless. And I already have a 32 GB iPod Touch for surfing and music,” he said.

Admitting all that is probably not an ideal solution, Malik – wiith over 1800 friends on Facebook and nearly 20,000 followers on Twitter – found solace in the fact his new devices “can all be charged using the USB port of my Macbook, thereby obviating the need for extra chargers.”

Given that his decision rested solely on the deficiencies of AT&T’s network in the San Francisco Bay Area – ungodly stretches of time “searching” for the network, slow download speeds of web pages, problems with email, static, dropped calls and shoddy call quality – and he professed love for the iPhone, it’s a wonder he didn’t just jailbreak it.

It’s the app that’s launched, whatever, a lot of downloads. iFart Mobile lead developer Joel Comm elaborated about the beginnings of the talked-about app in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.

If you have not downloaded the app and have been wondering exactly why anyone would pay $.99 for a souped-up electronic Whoopee cushion, here’s what it does:

Q: What is the iFart Mobile iPhone application that you created?

Answer: It’s an electronic entertainment or sound machine. It produces flatulence noises. There are a number you can select from. Each has their own name and you push the button to fart now and it makes the sound. We built in a few other interesting features like the sneak attack which you can set to go off after a certain number of seconds or minutes. And the security fart, which when you put the phone down after five seconds, it goes into alarm mode and if anybody picks the phone up, and it detects motion, then it lets off the designated sound. We also included fart a friend, which lets you e-mail a selected sound to another e-mail address. And then there is the ‘record a fart,’ which lets you add a custom sound to the selection wheel.

Q: Why did you make it?

Palm will reportedly use the first day of CES to unveil a handset based on the long-awaited Nova operating system. The phone is seen as Palm’s best chance to recover from a disastrous 2008.

Citing a “trusted source,” CrunchGear says the handset to be released Thursday is described as “iPhone-like” with a potrait display and a slide-down QWERTY keyboard.

In December, Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein told BusinessWeek the device would bridge the gap between the BlackBerry and iPhone. Rubinstein, credited with helping develop the iMac and iPod, joined Palm in 2007 when private equity firm Elevation Partners provided $325 million for a stake in the company. Last month, Elevation gave Palm another $100 million.

Writing Monday for the eWeek blog, AppleWatch, Joe Wilcox gave the iPhone a D in telephony and a C for battery life, saying he simply could not recommend the device as a phone. Despite singing the praises of Apple’s mobile platform he gave it an overall grade of B- and seemed mighty pleased to announce that everyone in his family has rejected the iPhone in favor of an iPod Touch + some other cell phone.

I find Wilcox’s assessment curious and wonder how many of the other 8 – 10 million iPhone owners feel their device is so disappointing from the telephony and usability standpoints that they’d actually prefer to carry two devices around instead of one. Follow me after the jump to learn what Wilcox thinks is so bad about iPhone and where my own assessment takes me in response.

An unnamed Samsung official said the company is “accelerating” development of the handset in order to meet “specific needs of local carriers,” according to South Korean ET News.

Although few details are known, the handset may include a design similar to Samsung’s Instinct and Omnia phones, according to one report.

Amazon MP3, the DRM-free digital music store, is far from a rival to Apple’s iTunes, claims a Tuesday report. The MP3 arm of online retail giant Amazon.com has only 5 percent to 10 percent of the market, compared to more than 70 percent for iTunes, according to All Things Digital.

The report’s estimate cited an unnamed label executive.

The one year-old MP3 store “has failed miserably” as a rival to iTunes, Peter Kafka wrote. Amazon earned $39 million on $82 million in sales – the bulk going to Universal Music Group, the report suggested.