While the Spotify music service continues to tease us US-bound folks from afar, there's word of a Spotify handset now to make us even more jealous. The phone is apparently being built for Swedish provider Telia (Spotify already accounts for 35 percent of digital music sales in Sweden), and according to TechCrunch, INQ is building the phone. Interestingly, the last thing we heard from INQ about future plans was a forthcoming Android handset, and we also have a source that says that Spotify probably wouldn't be placed onto a regular BREW-powered INQ handset, so the optimist in us would like to believe that this Spotify phone could be INQ's big Android play -- there is already an official Spotify Android app to make that whole process seem even more doable. Either way, Telia's Spotify handset should be on the market in a "couple of months."

[Via Pocket-lint]

Streaming and subscription music services are a dime a dozen on iPhone, and they seem to get past Apple's app store approval hurdles with relative ease. But Spotify was one whose fate wasn't so clear cut, given its offline playlist function -- which as the name suggests downloads songs ahead of time for you to listen to when there's no WiFi or phone service to stream from -- could very easily fall into the category of "duplication of core iPhone functionality" and get deep-sixed at the drop of a hat. Turns out that's not the case here, as an Apple spokesperson has told paidContent UK that the app's been given the metaphorical stamp of approval and would be hitting the store "very soon." A premium subscription will run about £9.99 ($16.20) per month, with an option to pay annually coming at a later date. Of course, there's a catch, as Spotify's service is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain for now. The company expects to invade America sometime later this year, but that means another round of app store approvals -- and with Apple's track record on consistency, there's no telling how that'll turn out.

Mmm, the sweet smell of mobile data burning up the pipes in the morning. Gets us every time. Evidently, the same aroma does something to the brains of Ericsson and TeliaSonera, who have taken their January agreement to the next level by introducing the planet's first commercial Long-Term Evolution (LTE) site in Stockholm, Sweden. Mind you, we've seen lots of trial runs over the past year and change, but this one's no test. Rather, this site will become part of a commercial network scheduled to go live in 2010, bringing wicked fast mobile transfers to Stockholmers everywhere. Now, let's hope these American carriers get jealous, and fast.

Network buildouts our expensive, and virtually every carrier in the world is staring down the barrel of a potentially multibillion-dollar LTE or WiMAX upgrade over the coming years. How do you soften the blow? One option is to make a strange bedfellow or two, and that's exactly what Telenor and Tele2 have done in Sweden. The rival carriers have agreed to form a joint venture to share the cost of crafting a new LTE network from the ground up and sharing spectrum in the 900 and 2600MHz bands, kicking off this year with the goal of offering service in 2010. From the customer's perspective, it seems like this could ultimately limit competition and healthy price pressure in the marketplace -- but if the alternative is waiting a few more years for these pricey networks to get off the ground, we suppose we'll take it.

[Via GigaOM]

Are you the type who falls deaf in the presence of the latest gadget? Add a girl and your mouth falls agape from the loss the muscle control required to speak? Good, we've got the video for you. A site in Sweden is showing off LG's new Arena KM900 flagship phone along with a first peep at its dynamic 3D S-Class UI. While we're not seeing any of that promised multi-touch here, the cubic interface is interesting and makes good use the KM900's 3-inch, 800 x 480 pixel WVGA display and dedicated media chip. It's also expected to hit in April for 4,500 Swedish Krona or $535 US if our translation of that image (lower-left) is correct. Worth it? Hit the read link for the video (in Swedish) and let us know.

[Thanks, Martin]

It was just yesterday that Reuters predicted Nokia's Comes With Music service was headed for something of a pilgrimage through the wilds of Europe, and now we have the official confirmation of this "pan European" expansion. The company has secured partnerships with music licensing and publishing big-wigs in Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and is indicating that Singapore and Australia are next on its to-do list. Alas there was no mention of other nations getting any sort of attention, meaning Nokia handsets in the New World are unlikely to come with anything but guilt for the forseeable future.

LTE just got officially legitimized under a month ago, and already Nordic-based TeliaSonera is lining up contracts in an effort to showcase its forward-thinking nature to the world. Both Huawei and Ericsson have been chosen to provide 4G LTE equipment for high-speed networks in Stockholm and Oslo, with SE proclaiming that the Swedish network will be ready for commercial launch in 2010. It's expected that the first devices to tap into these newfangled waves will be of the USB / external variety, with 4G handsets following six to twelve months later. Did our 3G just get slower, or are our brains already messing with us?

[Via Network World, image courtesy of BusinessWeek]

Read - Huawei deal
Read - Ericsson deal

Neonode AB, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Neonode, Inc., has filed a petition for bankruptcy in Sweden. The company, which has focused almost all of its efforts on pushing the now aged Neonode N2 since 2004, finally caved after looking so vulnerable in late July. According to Per Bystedt, CEO and Chairman of Neonode: "For the past six months we have focused on turning the business around and solving the financial situation of Neonode AB; we continue to have great belief in our technology and believe we have a competitive product in the Neonode N2 but without sufficient funds we cannot continue operations." No word of a revamped OS. No word of hardware tweaks. Nothing that sounds to us like they really want to survive in today's high-stakes handset market. At any rate, the parent company is hoping to trudge on as a technology licensing company, with or without Mr. N2.

[Via GeekZone]

Alongside the W902 plus (pictured), Sony Ericsson has officially launched its PlayNow Plus music service. Currently, the unlimited music download service is only being offered through Sweden's own Telenor, but we suspect more carriers (and compatible handsets) will be added on in due time. For now, however, everyone outside of Sweden will have to rely on insider reports to see how the service fares, not that we're suggesting any Swedes drop us a bone in comments or anything. Ahem.

Call us cynical, but we just can't see this one working out it. A team of researchers from Umeå University in Sweden are reportedly looking to sync up events on a soccer field to vibrations in a cellphone, essentially enabling you to keep track of the action without having to focus your eyes / ears on the handset. The proposed system could send vibrations to the phone that would act as a way of communicating possession, ball placement and (of course) gooooooooaaallllls, but obviously a few obstacles still stand in the way. For starters, buzzing your mobile through an entire tilt would do a number on the battery life, and even though you could "feel" the action, it would still require a great deal of attention. In all honesty, we'd say this whole system probably has more promise off the pitch than on, but then again, we call football soccer, so what do we know?

[Via UnwiredView]

Nothing like a pair of high-brow Europeans slapping each other in the streets, huh? In response to Nokia's forthcoming Comes with Music service, Sony Ericsson is confirming rumors by announcing a competing unlimited music download service dubbed Play Now Plus. The service, which will be available "solely through telecoms operators," will provide subscribers with access to millions of tunes, and customers can even keep up to 300 jams after their 6- to 18-month contract expires. According to SE's marketing head Lennard Hoornik, it'll be rockin' on Telenor within a few weeks, and it will spread from Sweden into more of Western Europe in Q1 2009 and into other world markets in Q2 2009. We're told that the service will run early adopters 99 Swedish crowns ($15) per month, and so far as we can tell, you don't have to have a specific SE phone to get in on the action.

Feel that heat, Touch Pro? That's right -- the Great QWERTY Smartphone War of 2008 is officially gearing up for kickoff now that Sony Ericsson has announced a firm date for the first handful of lucky countries to be scoop up the mighty XPERIA X1. Sweden, Germany, and the UK will be the inaugural launch sites come September 30, with no fewer than 32 more on tap in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America for the fourth quarter of the year. North America, China, Australia, and Russia are also listed as committed launch regions, though dates for those will be announced "in the coming months" -- scary verbiage considering that they weren't even willing to slap the Q4 label there. 2009's a long way off yet, and if there's a Touch Pro in front of us... well, let's just say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, if you catch our drift.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about iPhone 3G reception issues. Whether they exist or not is largely irrelevant in a world dominated by sound-bite driven perceptions. Nevertheless, some industrious Swedes decided to apply a little scientific method to the argument and found something interesting: the iPhone 3G performed just as well (or just as poorly, depending upon your mood) as a Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1 when compared head-to-head in a mobile communications test chamber. The test was conducted by real-life antenna engineers just like those camera-fumbling souls contracted by the FCC. Of course, who's going to let a few facts stand in the way of contrary opinion and litigation, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Ok ok, we hear you tipsters, iPhone now official for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia "later this year" thanks to a deal between Apple and TeliaSonera. At this point, only The Netherlands seems to be out of the loop in Europe.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]