According to the latest industry speculation, Apple’s rumored HDTV product launch is poised to dramatically impact the HDTV market in the U.S.

Ben A. Reitzes of Barclays Capital says that if Apple releases a device costing no more than $1,500, Apple could immediately claim roughly 5% of he HDTV market.

In doing so, Apple would generate first year product revenue of approximately $17 billion.

“Apple’s eventual television could be so much more than a TV — including gaming, video, communication, content delivery, apps, computing and all the capabilities of the current Apple TV — it is not really fair to compare it to products already available on the market,” Reitzes said Tuesday.

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On Friday, comScore released the latest data from the comScore MobiLens service, which reports key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending December 2011.

The study found that Google Android strengthened its lead in the smartphone market during the period to capture a 47.3 percent market share.

All told, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices during the three-month period ending in December.

97.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.

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A new report published Friday from Distimo provides an overview of the effects when an application is featured in the Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad and Google Android Market.

One of the key findings of the report shows that the average revenue rose by 41% in the Apple App Store for iPhone when looking at those applications that were already among the 100 highest grossing applications in any category, on the first day of the sale.

Moreover, Distimo’s report finds, the revenue during the whole sale increased by 22%. In the Apple App Store for iPad those figures were +52% and +19%, respectively. In the Google Android Market on the first day the revenue increased by 7%, and during the whole sale increased by 29%.

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On Tuesday, Apple shattered all standing records with regard to the company’s quarterly earnings.

After the close of business on Wall Street today, Apple announced its earnings rose more than 117% to $13.06 billion last quarter, or $13.87 per diluted share.

Apple’s revenue was a new quarterly best at $46.33 billion. Earnings were forecast to climb by just 57% to $10.08 a share with revenue projected at $38.85 billion.

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The friendly skies just got friendlier toward late Apple co-founder and iPhone pioneer Steve Jobs.

This week, Silicon Valley’s Virgin America announced that it will name a jet in Steve Jobs’ honor.

According to CNET, the plane in question is an Airbus A320 and sports the popular Jobs’ quote “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” on its nose.

“The ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’ aircraft name was actually submitted as a tribute to Mr. Jobs by one of our employees in an internal plane naming competition,” says Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini.

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On Thursday at Apple’s eagerly anticipated media event at New York’s famed Guggenheim Museum, Apple executive Phil Schiller introduced iBooks 2 for iPad.

Schiller hailed the iPad as the ultimate tool for learning and said Apple is poised to harness this potential for the good of future students everywhere.

The digital textbooks showcased today were highly interactive with easy to access glossary items and graphics.

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Blue Bite, a mobile marketing company that specializes in location-based campaigns, has published results of a recent NFC-enabled mobile campaign for hotel reservation app HotelTonight that saw more than 15,000 unique mobile engagements in the first six weeks alone.

Blue Bite teamed up with RMG networks — a provider of Out-Of-Home (OOH) TV & video networks — as well as mobile advertising provider Amobee to launch the campaign for HotelTonight across a handful of major U.S. markets.  HotelTonight’s mobile app allows users to book same-day hotel reservations.  To jumpstart the campaign, Amobee utilized RMG Network’s locations outfitted with Blue Bite’s mTAG Platform to reach HotelTonight’s core demographic.  These RMG network locations included eight major U.S. airports and hundreds of “busy downtown cafe locations across the country.”

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