Ken Hong, an LG representative in Seoul, is the one who unveiled the said plans, a recent article on PC World reports. “We have a deep relationship with Microsoft so expect to have a couple by the end of this year,” is what Ken Hong stated. Considering the fact that the first Windows Phone 7 prototypes showed to the world included an LG device, there are great chances that the company would indeed be able to deliver these devices in time for the holiday season.

LG and Microsoft do have a tight partnership on the mobile space, that for sure. Last year, the handset vendor committed to the launch of a large number of devices running under Microsoft’s mobile operating system, and it seems that the end of 2010 would bring to display the first fruits of that agreement. However, no specific number has been unveiled for the time being, which means that LG might launch only two Windows Phone 7 handsets in 2010, although enthusiasts are certainly hoping for more.

Renderings of LG’s Windows Phone 7 prototype device, the LG Panther, emerged into the wild several months ago, and we already had the chance to take a look at it. However, we still don’t know how the previously leaked LG C900 and LG E900 would actually look like, nor what they would be capable of offering, though chances are that we’d learn all about them before 2011 is here. What still has to be confirmed is the September launch of LG’s first WP7 handset, since the OS was previously said to arrive only in October.

LG is a primary OEM partner for Windows Phone 7, but it seems that the company is also interested in the opportunities other mobile operating systems out there would offer. LG Android devices already arrived on shelves, as well as some running under other Linux platforms, in addition to a long list of features phones, which were LG’s main focus with the launch of its new Application Store.

By Ionut Arghire, Mobile Editor

B&N plans to free up room for Nooks in part by shrinking space devoted to CDs; in this era, you gotta think that it probably would be deemphasizing sales of music on shiny discs no matter what. It says it’s not going to carry fewer dead-tree books.

The move presumably means that B&N is in the hardware business for the long haul and already has future generations of Nooks in the works. The first-generation Nook got off to a somewhat bumpy start; its software was slow and buggy, and some promised features weren’t immediately available; but the company has improved it through multiple software updates. It’s also knocked the price down to $199 and introduced a $149 model with Wi-Fi but no 3G connection.

Barnes & Noble also offers e-reader software for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC, and Mac, and it powers the e-book stores for devices from Nook competitors such as Pandigital. The Times doesn’t say whether the new boutiques will spotlight any of these other ways to read digital books.

by Harry McCracken, Technologizer

With the early success of the Apple iPad–more than 3 million sales and counting–and a batch of Android tabletsscheduled to arrive by the end of the year, Microsoft is coming to the party late. True, Redmond has toyed with tablet PCs for years, including long-forgotten experiments such as the Toshiba Portege M205-S810 laptop/slate hybrid, but it’s still a no-show in the iPad era. This will soon change, however.

Desktop to Tablet

Unfortunately, Microsoft plans to retrofit Windows 7 to run on slates. While Win 7 is a fine operating system for conventional PCs, it was never designed for touch input, a shortcoming that makes it inherently clunky for the new breed of touchscreen tablets.

To be fair, Windows 7 does include Windows Touch, an interface overlay that allows you to use multitouch finger gestures–the flicks and taps familiar to smartphone users–on a Win 7 tablet. But touch input isn’t a particularly efficient way to navigate the Windows UI, which was designed for mice and keyboards.

The Windows Start button, desktop icons, and application menus were designed for the mouse and cursor, not the less-precise movements of the finger. I’m writing this blog post in Office 2007, and the ribbon interface above the text window is packed with feature options that are spaced too closely together for touch input, particularly on the relatively small (e.g. 10-inch) screens we’re likely to see on most Windows 7 tablets. Similarly, how well would touch work with a complex spreadsheet in Excel? Again, touch’s lack of precision isn’t a good match for much of today’s business software.

There’s always the option of an external keyboard for Windows 7 tablets, something akin to what iPad users have for iWork and other productivity apps. And Microsoft may very well introduce a modified version of Office exclusively for tablets.

But wouldn’t a mobile OS be a better fit for slates? Apple went that route with the iPad, which uses the iOS (iPhone OS)–built from the ground up for touch–rather than the Mac’s desktop-bound OS X. Google took a similar route: Android OS is designed especially for finger-friendly mobile devices.

There’s also the question of Windows 7′s power consumption on a tablet. Could a Windows tablet running a power-hungry desktop OS match the iPad’s 10-hour battery life? The verdict’s still out, but I suspect the answer isn’t pretty.

And then there’s speculation that last week’s agreement between Microsoft and chipmaker ARM may mean that Redmond still intends to build a tablet OS based on its Windows Phone 7 mobile software, a seemingly logical move that would mimic Apple’s and Google’s approach to slates.

Could that be Microsoft’s ultimate goal? Is Windows 7 an interim tablet OS, soon to be replaced by Windows Phone 7? I suspect that’s the case. After all, the desktop version of Windows has failed before in the tablet market. It’s likely to fail again.

By By Jeff Bertolucci, PC World