MANILA, Philippines — Plenty of our colleagues in the IT media stayed up late last Wednesday night or woke up hours earlier than their usual rising time the following dawn. The reason for their self-imposed sleep-deprivation: Apple's much rumored and anticipated announcement of its latest gadget, many analysts predicted would be the iPad 3.

Apparently, journalists covering the consumer tech industry, who were supposed to be too jaded to get excited over another gadget launch or at least exude the air of one who was, were willing to give up sleep over a product announcement.

I can barely imagine what marketing people would give just to have something even remotely approaching such a hold or influence on pencil-pushers.

It's an Android/Apple World

Robots and a biblical fruit rule the US smartphone market. Data from market research firm ComScore revealed that Android's share of the market rose from 46.3 percent in the quarter ending October 2011 to 48.6 percent to the three-month period ending January 2012. The market share of Apple's iOS, meanwhile, rose from 28.1 percent to 29.5 percent during the same period.

Research In Motion saw its share fall from 17.2 percent to 15.2 percent, while Microsoft's minuscule 5.4 percent shrank to a gloomier 4.4 percent.

The number of American consumers who own a smartphone reached 101.3 million in January, passing by the 100-million milepost for the first time.

This also means that the market's growth potential, i.e., Microsoft-Nokia's chances for expanding their share of the market, has significantly become smaller.

Samsung retained its lead-manufacturer status, accounting for 25 percent of all smartphone units sold during the period.

SAP, Samsung: Corporate Partners

SAP has partnered with Samsung to enhance the companies' chances of penetrating the corporate market for smartphones and tablets via the Android route. At present, the market is dominated by BlackBerry, although iPhones and iPads have made some significant progress.

To set an example for future corporate clients, SAP will deploy Samsung's Galaxy S II smartphones and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets internally. The Android gadgets will deploy with SAP's Sybase Afaria mobile-device management platform.

Samsung hopes the partnership will let the Korean vendor expand into the enterprise mobile device market.

China Mobile's iPhone Subscribers

China's numero uno mobile operator, China Mobile, has yet to secure a partnership deal with Apple for the world's coolest smartphone. The Chinese operator, however, has about 15 million iPhone customers, which is actually a relatively small portion of its more than 655 million subscribers.

(Wait. China Mobile's total number of subscribers is almost ten times the number of all Filipinos, including those who live and work in other countries?)

Also, out of that 655 million, only about 54 million subscribe to the company's 3G services.

China Mobile hopes the iPhone's coming will help it expand its 3G subscriber base.