The week on Wall Street kicked off with a mix of projections for iPhone sales. On Apple desktops, there was consensus: 2009 will be the year of the notebook.

Continuing the revised iPhone outlooks of last week, Openheimer nearly cut in half its expectations for the December quarter, projecting 4.8 million iPhone sales will be reported for the quarter, down from analyst Yair Reiner’s previous 7.5 million. Reiner also cut his forecast of yearly iPhone sales to 21.3 million from 27 million.

At the other end of the spectrum were analysts which announced bullish expectations for iPhone sales. J.P. Morgan expert Mark Moskowitz foresees 26.7 million handsets sold in 2009 while Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid told clients he felt 24.8 million iPhones would sell next year, upping his previous projection of 22.5 million sold.

While there was little agreement on future iPhone demand, no analyst disputed that desktops sales are headed lower as laptops grow in popularity.

In his Monday note, Reid cut his forecast for Mac desktops from 11.1 million to 10.5 million for 2009. Likewise, Oppenheimer’s Reiner shaved his desktop expectations from 1.02 million to 960,000.

Laptops and low-cost netbooks will take up the slack of slower desktop demand, the analyst wrote. Reiner expects Apple will sell 1.61 million MacBooks, up from his previous 1.54 projection.

Apple has said it won’t get into the netbook arena. However, pressure from inexpensive laptops produced by HP, Dell and others could force Cupertino’s hand.

For Apple to continue its upward momentum, “it will likely require the introduction of lower priced offerings,” according to Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi.

Telia is going to offer MMS to Scandinavian iPhone users on their network. A lot of use US iPhone owners are going to become extremely envious of those who finally are able to send picture messages without a problem. Telia subscribers will be able to download the homegrown iPhone application in just a few months.

There is still little information that tells just how Telia was able to achieve MMS functionality in the iPhone, but we predict that eventually it will find a way over to the US. With previous MMS “hacks” it is required to add the MMS feature to your AT&T plan in order for it to work. Last time we checked this did not cost any extra per month.

[Via MacWorld]

“Secondary backlight indicator for portable media devices” was filed on May 18th 2007. The idea is a double-layered backlight for the iPhone or iPod; the rearmost layer shows items such as “paused”, “new mail” and other notifications by shining though cutouts in the primary backlight. The secondary backlight is designed to be a more energy efficient way to show notifications without the use of the primary backlight.

The status icons can change color or even flash depending on the backlight and user’s preference. This type of notification can replace the more common LED status lights. As usual there is no word on when this will be implemented in to an Apple device.

[Via SlashGear]

Lay-offs have become common as a winter cold as companies from New York to Silicon Valley cope with the ailing economy. But Apple, in its inimitable way, is hoping a bit of employee shuffling will prevent any more pink slips.

Friday, Palm confirmed it would drop employees from the Treo maker, telling CNET the move was made due to “challenges facing our company and the industry.” Although Palm didn’t mention the number of layoffs, Silicon Valley blog Valleyway put the figure at 1,050.

Apple, despite recently eating into Palm’s marketshare, hasn’t escaped worrying about a slowdown in consumer demand for gadgets. However, instead of jobs cuts, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is experimenting with reduced hours for its sales staff and extra duty for Apple Store workers more accustom to answering support questions or tackling creative tasks.

As part of the limited trial, Mac Specialists, who greet customers at the door and push Apple products, will have their part-time schedules reduced by four hours. To compensate, Apple Geniuses will be asked to take up the slack - working four extra hours per week as a Specialist. Apple employees working in the Studio are will be required to work eight hours in sales, according to Apple Insider.

The job shuffling effects an unknown number of Apple retail locations. The trial results will determine whether the job shuffling will expand or be ditched in favor of ordinary job cuts.

Both Apple and Palm are responding to slower sales. Even usually brisk online transactions are lower, according to a new estimate of sales for this year’s holiday period.

Consumers are expected to spend just $30 million online in November and December, according to researchers at eMarketer. The company revised its previous sales projection, which had been on track to mark another year of double-digit e-commerce growth.

“People are going to be more frugal this holiday season,” analyst Jeffrey Grau said in a statement. EMarketer announced Monday it expects online sales to grow just 4 percent, down from the 10 percent earlier projected.

Online sales will likely increase by 7.2 percent for all of 2008, less than half of the 19.2 percent reported in 2007.

Meanwhile, in a bit of economic irony, Palm’s saviour may come from its rival Apple. Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s former senior engineering vice-president, in September joined Palm’s board of directors as part $725 millionfrom investment firm Elevation Partners.

Pirates are back. If you’ve been reading the news you know we mean the bad-ass high-seas kind, not the frilly-shirted guyliner ones from the movies.

It’s likely that aught-age pirates who have been terrorizing ships off the Horn of Africa recently have better tools than the odd rusty compass, at the very least iPhones with Google maps.

With this new breed in mind, Glenn Jones, a graphic designer and illustrator from Auckland, New Zealand designed this Modern Pirate T-shirt, yours for $20.

Those thigh-high boots do look good accessorized by an iPhone, we find.

Via Nerd Approved

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The team on Saturday posted to its blog QuickPwn for 2.2 and Pwnage for 2.2 for Windows and Macintosh machines along with instructions on how to jailbreak iPhone 3G phones on 2.2.

The blog also includes a word of caution about baseband, the chip that controls the connection between the phone and the mobile phone network:

“Think of it like a cable modem or other peripheral that is attached to your home PC that needs occasional updates. When a software update is released and presented to you within iTunes the baseband is sometimes updated (to fix bugs or add new features). The 2.2 update for the iPhone 3G contains such an update, so running the vanilla updater straight away with iTunes will reprogram and update the baseband. This could be bad for certain people, depending on your ultimate aim.”

The iPhone Dev Team, which has been at the forefront of every jailbreak and unlock procedure for each new iPhone model and OS iteration, is apparently very close to the elusive unlock for the iPhone 3G. A recent post to the team’s blog states that the following tasks have now been accomplished: Unsigned code execution on 3G baseband, Reverting 01.45 baseband to previous versions, and ore.

Original story at Gizmodo .

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