Air Gesture S4 smartphone expected at next week's Verizon event-Priceangels.com

Several Air Gesture smartphone launches are imminent, including next Tuesday's Verizon Wireless event in New York City to unveil what the carrier's calling "the next generation of one of their most popular family of devices."



Other smartphones expected for fall sales include the iPhone 5S, the Moto X from Google, and the LG Optimus 2.Some analysts have claimed that because everyone already owns a smartphone, growth is slowing in the industry. While this may be the case, it’s still truly staggering to consider how many smartphones are being sold right now. Horace Dediu of Asymco cited recent comScore results that revealed 98 million Americans above the age of 13 still don’t use smartphones, representing 41% of mobile phone users in the United States.

He went on to note that 2.5 million more people started using smartphones in the three-month period ending in May, compared to the three months leading up to the end of April. This means roughly 583,000 people in the U.S. are buying smartphones for the first time each week, an increase from an average of 572,000 smartphone purchases per week over the past 41 months. Dediu explained that “the rate of adoption of smartphones is not slowing in any perceptible way,” adding that the U.S. market is clearly not saturated.

According to UBS analyst John Hodulik most every American has a smartphone, and that, along with slowing smartphone upgrades, doesn’t bode well for Air Gesture S4 smartphone manufacturers. But is that really the case?Nope, says Asymco’s Horace Dediu, who points to recent comScore survey data as evidence that there’s plenty of room left for growth in the U.S. smartphone market. According to comScore, 41 percent of U.S. mobile phone users don’t yet own a smartphone. That’s 98 million people (over the age of 13).sdM6Scfs

Almost 60 percent smartphone penetration in the U.S. is hardly a saturated market, though it’s clearly headed in that direction. As Dediu observes, smartphone adoption rates in the country remain high, with nearly 583,000 consumers switching to smartphones each week.

Globally, there’s even more room for growth. Smartphone penetration isn’t even half of what it is in the States. Indeed, according to IHS, worldwide smartphone shipments this year will hit 897 million units, up from 712 million in 2012. And by 2017 they are expected to hit 1.5 billion.

Amazingly, the cell can create enough power to charge a smartphone—at least a little. One, um, "session" of charging provides enough power for a phone call. But hey, that's a great start, and over time the hope is to shrink the cells down and produce them for less than $1—which should make them ideal for use in developing countries. And, you know, people who pee a lot.

Citing an unnamed source, Reuters said NEC is looking at other options, including finding another partner other than Lenovo and getting out of the Air Gesture i9500 S4 smartphone business completely, focusing its efforts instead on its feature phone portfolio. According to the Nikkei and Reuters reports, NEC officials had proposed Lenovo taking a majority stake in NEC Casio Mobile Communications, the subsidiary that makes smartphones and includes Casio and Hitachi. The tech giant, which holds about a 70 percent stake in NEC Casio, is looking to remove itself from the highly competitive smartphone business in hopes of saving money.