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LG previews what it will show at Mobile World Congress 2012 and announcing the Optimus Vu-- a smartphone-tablet hybrid with a 5" touchscreen, similar to the Dell Streak and the Galaxy Note.

The unusual IPS LCD display uses a 4:3 aspect ratio (1024x768 resolution) and is stylus-friendly. The device itself is not too thick (8.5mm) and carries a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM and 32GB of internal memory. It also has x2 cameras (8MP rear-, 1.3MP front-facing)

The OS however is outdated, being Android 2.3 (aka Gingerbread) but LG already promises Ice Cream Sandwich updates.

Like the Note, it features a stylus-- one LG calls the "Rubberdium pen."

Will customers warm up to LG take on the pad-phone/"phablet" format? We will know once the Optimus Vu hits the market on March 2012.

Go LG Optimus Vu

Panasonic reveals the first details of its re-entry in the European mobile market with the Eluga-- a 4.3" Android smartphone revealed at the Panasonic Convention 2012.

The company says the phone is not only be light (weighing 103g) but also water and dust proof. The display has 960x540 resolution, with no mention of whether it is LCD or OLED.

Very few details are currently available, but Panasonic says Eluga users will be able to transfer images and videos to Panasonic TVs using the "swipe" Smart Viera app.

The phone should launch on March 2012, and we should have more details before then.

Go Panasonic Eluga Announcement (Twitter)

A spike in Q4 2011 iPhone sales (due to the iPhone 4S launch) "saved" an otherwise slow W. European smartphone market, Gartner says-- while other vendors such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and RIM show "disappointing" results.

On a global level, Q4 2011 smartphone sales to end users total 149M units with Y-o-Y growth reaching 47.3%. Smartphone sales for 2011 reach 472M units (up by 58% Y-o-Y) accounting for 31% of the total mobile device market.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, WW mobile internet traffic is set to grow by 18x in the 2011-2016 period-- reaching 10.8 exabytes monthly (or 130 exabytes yearly) by 2016. 

The company also projects 2016 mobile cloud traffic will account for 71% (7.6 exabytes) of total monthly mobile data traffic. In comparison, 2011 mobile cloud traffic totals 269 petabytes monthly (45%). 

Fueling such growth is the growth in mobile internet use for web surfing, internet access, video calling and GPS/location services. The report says there will be over 8 billion handheld mobile-ready devices and around 2BN machine-to-machine connections (such as GPS and asset tracking systems) by 2016. 

Cisco predicts such growth will drive mobile service providers to withdraw unlimited "all you can eat" data plans, moving instead towards tiered or value-based pricing. More providers will also start offloading traffic to fixed/wifi networks. 

Go Cisco Visual Networking Index