Pre conceivedTHIS will hardly be a vintage year for the mobile-phone industry. Gartner, a market-research firm, reckons global handset sales will shrink by around 4% to 1.2 billion units. Yet despite the gloom the industry is still pumping out new products. On June 6th Palm, a firm that pioneered hand-held digital devices, started selling a phone called the Pre. Two days later Apple unveiled souped-up versions
