Those Angry Birds are back. Taking projectile fun to new heights, the latest instalment of Angry Birds will feature Space themed levels. Rumours across the internet suggest, Rovio Mobile will launch Angry Birds Space across all major platforms on March 22nd. We can’t wait to get our hands on the opportunity to play with these new zones. Hopefully the programmers at Rovio will offer levels of differing gravity to add different challenges in your mission to eliminate those dastardly green pigs.

The Angry Birds franchise is a phenomenon across the smartphone market. With over 250 million downloads, there’s plenty of satisfied gamers who will flutter their feathers with excitement at the thought of some more bird launching banter. Over the past year, Angry Birds has developed way beyond an app. With a successful line of plush toys, cookbooks, watches and stereo speakers, Rovio is currently valued at 1.5 billion dollars on the US stock exchange.

Going galactic on March 22nd, if Angry Birds Space is to follow the trend of previous Angry Birds titles, expect Rovio’s latest offering to fly high across all platform charts within hours of release.

Its 2012 and this year, BlackBerry really need to pull their finger out in order to have a hope of keeping up with the likes of iOS and Android, who are currently head of the pack in the smartphone OS race. BlackBerry need to adopt customization options, new functionality and without question need to expand their BlackBerry App world, which is severely lacking in comparison to its iOS/Android equivalents. With less than 20,000 apps currently available, BlackBerry App World needs a serious overall, Apples App Store currently hosts over half a million Apps, while the Android Market is catching up with over 400,000. Additional to this, it feels as if BlackBerry’s previous OS attempts have continually looked quite dated. Hopefully with the arrival of BlackBerry 10 OS we can see fresh and bold new developments.

So, what’s the story on the rumourville for BlackBerry 10? Well firstly, a completely redesigned homescreen may be on its way, with moveable, interactive and customizable widgets. These will not be static and in fact if this rumour serves as true could see BlackBerry taking push notifications to a whole new level. These new widgets are rumoured to feature continual live updates/real time info with info such as Weather, album art, location all displayed. Updates to general UI and calling info are also promised but one is for sure, BlackBerry 10 is completely catered towards touchscreen orientated smartphones. Could this spell the end of BlackBerry’s iconic full QWERTY keyboard smartphone ranges, or just a downsizing? Only time will tell.

A recent report from the Sunday Times suggests that 50% of smartphone owners use their devices more frequently for apps, than the primary features of a phone; such as calls or texting.

With so many apps available for music, photos, gaming and everything else under the sun, owning a smartphone allows users to do so much more than just text or call their friends. The rise of social networking applications, amplifies this statistic further as friends remove the need for traditional contact methods through the interface of a communication app such as Facebook, Twitter, or Skype.

Further information from the report, suggests that the average smartphone owner has 38 apps on their device at any one time, with 50 per cent of users, installing a new app every week.

Android, the dominant OS on the market, announced their 11 billionth app download last month, demonstrating the desire for apps from thirsty smartphone users.

If we are talking big smartphone news in 2012, the two phones on everyone’s minds are the Apple iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S3.  With Apples constant  secrecy surrounding their future releases, confirmed specs are extremely unlikely, however many hoped that Samsung would be revealing their much anticipated, Android powerhouse, the Samsung Galaxy S3 at MWC 2012.  MWC, or the Mobile World Congress is the worlds largest exhibition for the mobile industry and if announced the Samsung Galaxy S3 would have clearly stolen the show.  Samsung have pulled an Ace out of their sleeve and gone against expectations, confirming that the Galaxy S3 will not be making an appearance at MWC 2012.  Instead they seem to be mirroring Apple’s hype machine announcements and are hosting a seperate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of 2012.  Just when excitement was reaching fever pitch, everyone has realised they in fact have to wait even longer…

Still, if we take a step back and look at it from Samsungs perspective its quite easy to see why they might take this approach.  The Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones have been hugely successful, with the Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 two of Samsungs best selling phones of all time.  The Galaxy S2 was in 2011 (and pretty much still is) regarded as the must have Android smartphone, as well as the biggest competition to the Apple iPhone 4/4S.  But what does all this mean?  Well Samsung may not have wanted attention and focus to be lost on their huge release, which with the large numbers of new products and announcements at MWC 2012, could have been a risk.  Instead Samsung have decided to opt for an independant announcement nearer the release date of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and we think the hype/buzz radar is going to be on overdrive!

Samsung have said in a statement that they do have other new mobile products that they are looking forward to demonstrating at this years Mobile World Congress but we can’t help but think they will get bugged for info on the S3 throughout the exhibition.  Still, there’s always information leaks, a very active rumour mill and that upcoming Samsung announcement to look forward to.  Hopefully we won’t have to wait much longer!