Jon Peddie’s latest graphics shipment numbers are in, and the results are well in line with the trends identified in our previous reporting on the Intel and AMD earnings calls. Specifically, the entire channel is preparing for a boost in sales soon, as seasonal back-to-school buying starts. Everyone is also hoping and praying for a round of IT upgrades that are now overdue. The thinking is that there is a ton of pent-up demand in the IT market as everyone is keeping costs down by not upgrading, so all of that demand will have to come rushing into the market the minute that IT managers get some money to spend again. In this respect, the channel is “pricing in” the expected IT upgrade spending, so let’s hope that it isn’t disappointed.

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Acer and ASUS, the two largest netbook OEMs, are not going to launch more Menlow-based netbooks, allowing their current N270 and N280-based models to carry the day until Intel’s Pine Trail platform makes its debut early next year.

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Reports that China Unicom and Apple had reached a preliminary agreement to bring the iPhone to China have been denied by representatives from China Unicom. The initial news came from Shanghai Securities News, a top Chinese financial newspaper run by Xinhua News Agency. While China Unicom seems the most likely candidate to be Apple’s carrier partner in China, the company says no official deal has been made. “Discussions are still ongoing, we have not reached any formal agreement,” Sophia Tso, a spokesperson for China Unicom, told Reuters.

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Some developers are leveraging undocumented APIs in iPhone OS 3.0 to create “augemented reality” apps for the iPhone. However, Apple has told at least one developer to wait until the 3.1 update, already in beta, before submitting such apps for App Store approval.

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As announced two weeks ago, Windows Marketplace for Mobile has today started accepting application, game, and widget submissions over at developer.windowsmobile.com. Microsoft will soon begin testing and certifying the submitted third-party apps on a first in, first out basis.

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As capable as most computers are today, typical OEM systems have fairly limited gaming prowess since it isn’t their market. Enthusiasts need more memory, more video card, more processor, more something beyond the basics that usually ship with the average pre-built box. And selecting your own components to fill your exact needs is much more fun and often cheaper once you start talking $1,000+ systems. The various enthusiast System Guides around the Internet can help, but here in our Gaming Boxes Guide, we aim to provide a little more gaming focus than we do in our main three-box System Guide.

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Google has finally released a version of its Latitude geo-location service for the iPhone. However, Apple forced encouraged Google to abandon its native iPhone app, citing possible confusion with the default Maps app. Even though Google was able to develop a nice looking web-app alternative, the result leaves much to be desired.

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Based on corporate desktop operating data between Q3 2008 and Q2 2009, Forrester Research is reporting that Windows XP is slowly being pushed to the sidelines to make room for Windows Vista and Macs in the enterprise.

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Not getting enough iTablet rumors lately? Well, then we have one more for you: Sources speaking to AppleInsider indicate that Apple will in fact be releasing a iPod touch-like tablet device soon, and has slated the release for sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

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Apple has attempted to improve the security of iPhone data two ways with recent updates. One new feature is encrypted backups, available to any phone running iPhone OS 3.0 and iTunes 8.2 or later. Another is hardware-based encryption, available on the iPhone 3GS. On the surface, these things may seem industrial-grade, but iPhone data forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski told Ars that it’s trivial to get around these features.

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