Canadian mobile phone carrier Bell has made available for purchase on its airwaves a new Android handset coming from Motorola, namely the Motorola PRO + 4G.

One day after the Motorola PRO+ has gone live at Bell Canada, the handset manufacturer announced the smartphone is available for purchase in Hong Kong.

Motorola PRO+ is a mid-budget smartphone, which is powered by Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform and promises features that meets both corporate and entertainment needs.

For a suggested retail price of HK$3,988 (US$500 or 375 EUR).

Motorola PRO+ comes with a 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen with support for 16 million colors and 640 x 480 pixels resolution, which is protected by Gorilla Glass display.

In addition, the handset packs 4 GB of internal memory, 512 MB of RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).

PRO+ is not among the most powerful smartphones in the market, its 1 GHz single core processor provides users with enough speed and smooth browsing or multi-tasking experiences while on the move.

The phone is not all about touchscreen, as the phone also comes with a full portrait QWERTY keyboard that allows users to type faster and more accurate.

With pre-loaded Quickoffice Connect, users will be able to access, create and edit documents on the go.

Extra security protection features include full encryption, remote wipe of the device and SD card, PIN lock, password expiration and history.

These days People  are likely to go straight from a demanding day at work to a rocking night out, and we wanted to create a smartphone that would be perfectly at home in both worlds.

Motorola PRO+ rises to the demands of work or play, and does it at a price that’s right for young professionals,

” said Ritchie Ma, general manager of Motorola Mobility Hong Kong limited, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Motorola PRO+ is pre-loaded with the latest Google mobile services including Google Maps 5.0.

Google Talk and access to more than 250,000 apps from Android Market.

NOKIA has launched its long-awaited first Windows 7 smartphones, hoping to claw back market share it has lost in the smartphone race to chief rivals, Apple, Samsung and Google.

With price tags of $560 and $360, the Lumia 800 and 710 are based on Microsoft’s operating system and come eight months after Nokia and the computing giant said they were hitching up.

Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in selected European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain.

It will be sold in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year end.

Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music a free, mobile music streaming app will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year.

The company’s share price jumped almost 3 per cent in an otherwise depressed market on the Helsinki Stock Exchange but settled, closing almost unchanged at ($6.68).

Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users, has been the world’s biggest handset maker since 1998, selling 432 million devices last year – more than its three closest rivals combined.

Worse still, Nokia’s sales in the more lucrative smartphone market crashed 39 per cent in the third quarter as it continued to be squeezed in the low end by Asian manufacturers like ZTE and in the high end by the iPhone, Research in Motion’s Blackberry, Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan-based HTC Corp.

The iPhone has set the standard for smartphones among many design-conscious consumers and the Blackberry has been the favourite of the corporate set.

Google’s Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone.

Samsung and HTC – snapping at Nokia’s heels for third place in topend smartphones behind the iPhone and Samsung – are the biggest users of the Android platform.

Nokia is still operating Symbian software, older than Apple’s software and considered clumsy by many, although it has been upgraded.

Nokia also introduced the MeeGo platform in its flagship N9 model launched last month.

While the West leads the world in terms of an attractive place for IT firms to work, more Asian nations are moving up the ladder.

According to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Asian economies are closing the gap on the West in terms of their IT competitiveness.

A study showed, as they strengthen copyright protection and implement regulatory reforms.

The US retained its position as the world’s most competitive IT industry this year, followed by Finland and Singapore.

Europe dominated the top 20 places in a competitiveness index, which was based on criteria such as foreign investment policies, infrastructure, enrollment in higher IT education, patent registries, copyright protection and access to capital.

However, seven Asian economies made it to the top 20 Singapore (3), Australia (8), Taiwan (13), Japan (16), New Zealand (18), South Korea (19) and Hong Kong (19) up from six in the previous survey in 2009.

Malaysia moved up 11 notches to 31st, while India climbed 10 places to 34th. Singapore advanced six paces.

Malaysia and India recorded the sharpest improvements among the 66 economies surveyed worldwide.

the current market turmoil and the 2008 financial crisis, which have adversely affected Western economies, have boosted Asia’s rise.

BSA is a global industry group that works for copyright protection and counts among its members some of the world’s biggest technology firms.

China was in 38th place in the global index, up one notch, but needs to improve its copyright protection environment.