MANILA, Philippines -- Lately, a war of words has erupted among government leaders of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam, the most vocal among the countries claiming the Spratly group of islands.

Most would admire Vietnam's refusal to back down before a fully awake dragon's threatening display. After all, our Communist neighbor has bloodied the giant's nose in more than one occasion, the most telling of them during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War.

Now, most observers, however, would be baffled by the Philippines' plucky (some would say "intransigent") derring-do in going toe-to-toe with the world's largest non-American economy, and soon-to-be other superpower.

What drives this third-world country to recklessly challenge China's claim over a group of mostly desolate islands, aside from the fact that those islands are well within what international laws proscribe as its exclusive marine territory?

With this corner's focus on consumer electronics and IT in general, the question that really occupies the mind right now is:

What happens in case of a full-scale shooting war?

Would the flood of cheap electronics goods from Chinese manufacturers suddenly dry up?

Google Keeps Lead

Android, the mobile operating system designed by search giant Google, has grabbed 48 percent of the world's smartphone OS market in the second quarter of 2011, according to market research firm Canalys.

Steve Jobs' much-loved iPhone took 19 percent, which was good enough for second place.

Nokia fell to third place.

Meanwhile, Microsoft shipped less than 1.5 million smartphones, barely 1 percent of the worldwide market, which Canalys said saw 107.7 million units of smartphones shipped in the quarter alone.

Nokia: Ouch.

Microsoft: Ouch!

iPhone 5 Fever

Thirty five percent of the 2,852 online shoppers surveyed by Pricegrabber said they plan to buy an iPhone 5 when it is released this fall.

While the results of Pricegrabber's survey do not indicate if the study only covers customers who visited the company's Web site, the figures nevertheless say a lot about current iPhone owners' loyalty for Steve Jobs' brand.

Executives at most manufacturing companies would die or sell their souls for such customer loyalty.

Smartphones vs. Carriers

While mobile subscribers have been preoccupied with the war among the latest models of smartphones, we have failed to pay attention to the looming mother of all battles — the coming fight between data-capping carriers and the data-gulping next-generation smartphones.

The iPhone 5, for example, is being billed as a cloud-friendly handset, and as such is likely designed to handle and consume tons of data and hog carriers' networks.

Now, imagine what millions of such devices would do to carriers' bandwidth-crunching ways.

Do we see signs of more frays between handset makers and carriers, which have never been that chummy in the first place?

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.