Hey Brother Can You Spare a Blackberry?

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Yesterday was a bad day for some 40,000 Americans. They may not have received their pink slip yet. But, it's on the way. That's how many layoffs were announced in just one day of this increasingly fragile and bruised economy.

It's no coincidence, I believe, that as unemployment goes up; high-end cell phone sales are going down.

iPhone outsold the new Blackberry Storm five to one last month. Not surprising when you consider Blackberry is still the mobile device of choice for the typical corporate executive. Corporate executives are a dwindling population these days. Ergo.. less demand for the fancier model Blackberry mobile devices.

The same for other mobile devices. Motorola announced earlier this month that it is actually laying off half of its handheld device division and putting out less than a dozen new mobile device models this year.

And then there is Nokia. Yipes! The grandaddy of all mobile phone manufacturers in the world just published their 4th quarter earnings for 2008 a couple of days ago. N-O-T good. Sales were down 69% from the same quarter a year ago. Yes, you read that right. 69%!

So why is iPhone holding up as well as it is? A) It's Apple (insert shoulder shrug here) B) iPhones are popular with the personal consumer market (read that: teens, college students and DINKS who still have disposable income even in this economy).

So what are the recently laid off doing to stay connected without wires? We'll talk about that more tomorrow.

Digital Television Conversion Gets A Game Delay

Late breaking news out of the Senate last night, by the way. That February 17th deadline for American broadcasters to ditch analog television signals for good and make the jump to digital only... well, it's been postponed. It's now June 17th.

Please don't tell my mother in Florida who just spent $1000 on a new plasma TV.

Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio