The statistic du jour in the smartphone space is ‘Days to 1 million sold’. Engadget as the scoop:

Note: the iPhone 3G was launched in 21 countries at the same time, G1 was only launched in the US.  The G1 is about to explode – i.e. in a couple of days it will be available in the EU – ROCK!

I kept hearing that the iPhone had sold millions of units and assumed most of those phones were here in the US.  Turns out AT&T, the only carrier with the iPhone in the US, has only activated 4.3 million iPhones.  According to Fortune, iPhone 3G activations were down 21% quarter to quarter.  Surprisingly the iPhone is still outpacing the sale of RIM’s BlackBerry Storm.  I think the sale of T-Mobile’s G1 in this context is amazing…

Michael Oryl has a post on a new dual-SIM Android phone by General Mobile:

We added 19 grocery sores (online and local) to ShopSavvy today (local to NY, NJ, OH, DE and SC).  Next week we should be adding even more (including Texas).  We never really saw groceries as an important thing to ShopSavvy simply because we never go grocery shopping.  Who knew how many of you would scan bottled water and Coke – we certainly never thought for a second people would try to get a better deal on a six pack of Coke.  Anyway, we give up.  We are going to be working hard to add groceries to ShopSavvy.  But instead of simply providing pricing we are also going to provide health and safety information about the food products you scan – allergy and ingredient data to be specific.  Also, the folks from Amsterdam told us to include groceries so we will be including them as well into our grocery efforts – LONG LIVE FOOD!

The team here at Big in Japan has a VERY sophisticated system for determining what comes next:

Check out the stuff we want to do, but don’t have the people/resources to accomplish:

Users of ShopSavvy are reporting they are using ShopSavvy to determine if the liquidation deals at Circuit City are actually good deals.  Why buy something from Circuit City if it is cheaper at NewEgg or Amazon?

Are you a extatic/happy/satisfied? We get hundreds of emails from happy users each day, but I am sad to say I didn’t think that we should save them.  Recently T-Mobile asked us for REAL quotes from satisfied users.  If you are a user leave us a comment – you might see your name on a T-Mobile television commercial.  Use this format:

John Doe
Anytown, USA

PS – if you don’t like the application feel free to leave negative comments, but I seriously doubt T-Mobile will use them. 

Beginning this evening, ShopSavvy has been localized for Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Poland, Czech Repblic and The United Kingdom.  Localization includes currency (Pounds Sterling in UK, Euros in Germany, The Netherlands and Austria), country specific products and retailers and language.  Localized currency for Poland and The Czech Republic are coming in the next few days (why don’t they use the Euro anyway?).

Since the newest version of ShopSavvy – version 3.2 only applies to Europe we have decided NOT to alert our existing users to the new version.  Any user is welcome to upgrade, but my advice is to wait until next month when we have a number of new features in the next release.

The best way to download the application is through the Market (we have a direct URL if you experience any issues with the Market during the EU launch – just email us).  Once you have installed ShopSavvy we encourage you to insert sample data.  When you are on the home screen of ShopSavvy press the MENU button and then press the ‘insert samples’ option.  Your phone will then be filled with products inside of your wish lists, price alerts and history (these samples have been localized to your country).  This allows you play with ShopSavvy’s features BEFORE you have a chance to get to the store.  This feature has always been available in ShopSavvy (just undocumented).

Additionally, in our last update (also present in 3.2) we created a way to find related items.  Once you have scanned an item and received the results, you can press the MENU button and you will be given the option to find ‘related items’.  Go ahead and press it.  You may be surprised what you find.  Yet another undocumented feature.  Wohoo!

Also, it might make things easier to have a few EU products and barcodes to scan.  Here are some samples (click for highest resolution):

We have only launched ShopSavvy in the US and the UK, but we are about to launch in selected countries throughout the European Union.  I was shocked to learn that we already have users in 38 countries.  Of course currency, product and language localization isn’t available just yet for these countries, but nonetheless I had no idea the G1 had proliferated to so many countries.  Here is the list:

Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Latvia, Monaco, Mexico, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Singapore, Slovenia, Turkey
and of course the United States.

Eric Zeman is reporting that Motorola will be laying off as many as 50% of their handset employees.  The move is likely a result of Motorola’s Android-only smartphone strategy.  The company announced last year it would ONLY produce smartphones based on Google’s Android platform.