This could be the year that a single advanced Android will take over the world–or at least take a bite out of Apple.

2010 has certainly been HTC’s year. In the United States, the Taiwanese maker of cutting-edge Android handsets has drawn fanatical reviews for its Incredible (at Verizon) and EVO (at Sprint). In Europe, its wildly popular Desire–similar to the Nexus, which was sold directly by Google and could be used on the AT&T network–remained a ideal for stateside consumers, who clung to every rumor that it was coming to America.

But while HTC wowed numerous markets with numerous separate models, it was never going to unseat the iPhone–of which Apple has made different varieties for different types of networks–as the universal must-have mobile.

That may change. According to British tech news site The Inquirer, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reviewing a dual-radio HTC phone, which would be compatible on both GSM and CDMA networks.

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Distimo, a startup focused on providing app store analytics, has published its latest report detailing the mobile app ecosystem across the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone, BlackBerry’s App World, the Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store, Palm’s App Catalog and the Windows Marketplace for Mobile for July 2010 in the United States.

Similar to previous reports, Distimo primarily looked at pricing characteristics across all major app stores to determine the proportion of free vs. paid apps and the average cost of which, which continue to rise.  The Android Market continues to have the largest share of free apps compared to the others, with 60% of the total, compared to just 29% for Apple’s App Store for iPhone and 26% for the iPad App Store.  Android has more than double the amount of free apps than any of the other six App Stores in the report.

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The rumor machine was right.

Today, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, the Apple Store simultaneously went down, an indication that something, in fact, was coming.

In addition to rolling out an entirely refreshed line of iPods, Steve Jobs also premiered the new Apple TV, priced at an astonishingly low $99.

According to Jobs, the ambition behind Apple’s favorite “hobby” was to greatly simplify the digital media experience. Apple achieved this by dumping the internal hard-drive of the first generation Apple TV and making the new offering based solely on streaming content from Apple or your computer.

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Booyah’s latest LBS creation, InCrowd, has gone live in the Apple App Store.  Initially announced at Facebook’s “Places” launch event, InCrowd is the first app built off the Facebook Places API and the only location-based app that has exclusive access to Facebook search.

Leveraging data straight from Facebook, InCrowd takes the concept of “social gaming” to an entirely new level.  Beyond basic checkins and social utility, InCrowd allows users to create their own customizable avatars, “interact” with old and new friends nearby as well as accumulate status and virtual goods.

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It was reported over the weekend that Apple’s App Store has reached 250,000 total apps, reaching yet another important milestone in its short existence.

According to 148Apps.biz, who keeps a running tab on app store metrics, Apple’s U.S. App Store passed the quarter million mark on Friday, just two years and 49 days after it opened to the world.  As of Saturday morning, there were 251,007 applications from 50,304 publishers available for download for the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.  AppShopper.com, which keeps a similar list, has the total pegged at 253,777 apps, including 24,334 for the iPad.

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The ARIA Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas has always been known to lead Sin City in technological innovation, and is furthering that reputation with the release of three new iPhone apps.

The first one, simply dubbed “ARIA,” is an interactive concierge app for guests of the hotel, giving users on-the-go access to news, menus, directions, tickets, weather, special offers and much more within a single app.  User can take advantage of all the complex has to offer directly from the app, including reserving show tickets, booking reservations at the numerous restaurants or navigating the massive grounds.

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Automated checkin apps are becoming increasingly popular as LBS continues to pick up steam.  People want to make sure they checkin to venues they frequent, but it’s not always handy to whip out your cell phone, open an app and checkin — especially when you sport numerous apps at the same time.

Luckily, app developers were quick to solve the problem by taking advantage of background processing on the iPhone and Android devices.  Two new apps to fit that description are “Checkmate” and “Future Checkin,” both of which are iPhone apps primarily geared towards automated Foursquare checkins.

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