For all the talk about smartphone shortages — the HTC Droid Incredible, EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, and Apple iPhone 4 — it seems smartphones aren’t the only mobile devices in danger of short supply this summer. The iPad may be the next supply-chain victim.

Although consumers in some markets have already witnessed short iPad supplies, there are indications that the growing demand for the tablet devices may make the shortage worse before it gets better. One of Apple’s suppliers, LG Display, is admitting it may not be able to keep up with the demand for LCD components.

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AT&T launched a new hot-zone pilot Monday in downtown Charlotte, N.C., to provide supplemental Wi-Fi coverage for smartphone subscribers in an area that consistently experiences high 3G traffic and mobile data use. The wireless carrier also told media outlets that it will be introducing a software patch over the next three weeks to improve the performance of an Alcatel-Lucent app that has been slowing mobile-device data speeds for less than two percent of its wireless customers.

To cope with rising mobile data demand, AT&T has been implementing a variety of network upgrades over the past several months that are finally kicking into high gear. In the coverage areas where AT&T has completed higher-speed HSPA 7.2 service, AT&T CFO Rick Lindner said internal data is showing speed improvements in the 32 to 47 percent range.

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Apple’s iPhone 4 will ramp up its world tour Friday, reaching new markets in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia. The popular but trouble-plagued handset has been available since late June in France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom for the same cost as the U.S. version, $199 for the 16-gigabyte model and $299 for the 32-gigabyte iPhone. Apple has not announced price points for the new markets.

“iPhone 4 will roll out to many more countries later this year and Apple will announce availability and local pricing for these additional countries at a later date,” the company said.

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Jailbreaking may no longer be the appropriate term for downloading unapproved but legally acquired applications onto Apple’s iPhones, in the wake of new rules announced Monday by the U.S. government. The Library of Congress’ Copyright Office, which, every three years, reviews exemptions to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibiting unauthorized uses of certain products, has issued a new ruling that jailbreaking is legal.

The ruling, which could have a substantial impact on Apple’s ability to control what goes onto its devices, says a three-year exemption will be granted to “computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.”

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HTC is working to end the summer of the smartphone shortage. After assuring Android-based smartphone users that Samsung was its screen manufacturer of choice, the handset maker is switching to Sony products.

On Monday, HTC announced it will begin using Super LCD display technology in a variety of smartphones, including the HTC Desire and the global Nexus One set to launch later this summer. HTC seems to be shifting from the Samsung AMOLED screens that are in short supply and hindering the manufacture of popular smartphones. Sony makes the Super LCD displays.

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With the supply of current Internet addresses predicted to run out by the end of next year, India has issued orders for a transition to a new Internet protocol. Last week, the Indian government said all Internet service providers and telecommunications providers must be IPv6-compliant by the end of next year, and all government agencies and public-sector companies will need to switch by March 2012.

When the ISPs and telcos make the change, they can only offer IPv6 service, meaning the entire country will be compelled to upgrade. India in particular could be hard hit by the coming scarcity of Internet addresses because of its upcoming roll out of 3G and other broadband wireless services in the second most populous market on earth.

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Amid reports that Apple’s iPhone may soon be sold by rivals T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless, a new poll has found that nearly three-quarters of current iPhone users are just fine with AT&T.

Despite three years of bad publicity about the handset’s connectivity issues with AT&T as its sole U.S. wireless carrier — even before the antenna issue with the iPhone 4 — a Yankee Group poll found 73 percent very satisfied with AT&T’s service — a higher percentage than even AT&T customers as a whole and smartphone users as a whole, who came in at 68 and 69 percent, respectively.

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To the list of dwindling worldwide resources add Internet addresses. According to experts, the nearly 4.5 billion current addresses aren’t enough, only six percent of available addresses are left, and the Internet will run out of addresses by sometime late next year.

Three main factors are behind the upcoming shortage. One is the explosion in web access from multiple devices for each user, primarily in developed countries. Each of those smartphones, laptops, tablets, desktops and other devices that access the web require a different IP, or Internet protocol, address. And the demand for device addresses is increasing rapidly, with TVs, game consoles, even automobiles offering web-browsing capability.

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AOL is working to leverage the trends of the times with a new smartphone portal and two Android apps it hopes will capture consumer attention in an increasingly competitive mobile marketplace.

The new portal, m.aol.com, optimizes AOL for smartphones. Meanwhile, an AOL app for Android aims to make it easy for Android-powered smartphone users to access AOL’s most popular properties quickly. AOL credits the new mobile-focused direction to David Temkin, the company’s new vice president of mobile.

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As promised, Apple is gearing up to give away free bumper cases for the iPhone 4. The cases remedy an issue with the antenna that has caused perhaps more media attention than consumer complaints. Apple also announced a major delay in the release of the white iPhone 4.

Apple set up a web page and deployed a special iPhone app that lets iPhone 4 owners know how to get the promised case, which prevents users from touching the antenna band that encircles the smartphone’s edges. Consumers complained that signals dropped when their finger touched the bottom left side of the phone.

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A tablet computer for $35. That’s the estimated retail price of a prototype basic touchscreen tablet developed by the government of India.

The device, which uses the open-source Linux operating system, was unveiled Thursday by Kapil Sibal, India’s human-resource development minister. “This is our answer to M.I.T.’s $100 computer,” he told the Economic Times.

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With Apple breezing past Wall Street estimates this week by reporting $15.7 billion in revenue for its third business quarter, the pressure was on Microsoft — and the software giant delivered. Microsoft said Thursday it earned a record $16.04 billion in revenue during the second quarter, driven by the launch of Office 2010 and strong Windows 7 sales.

With 175 million licenses sold to date, Windows 7 is the fastest-selling operating system ever and now runs on more than 15 percent of all PCs worldwide, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein told financial analysts on a conference call.

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After downloading the latest version of Skype from Apple’s App Store, iPhone 4 users will have two options for live chats to talk to friends and family without using cell-phone minutes. Skype 2.0.1, recently adapted to use 3G signals instead of Wi-Fi, is now capable of running in the background while other apps are running to answer incoming calls, even when the phone is locked.

Together with Apple’s new Wi-Fi FaceTime, that’s two voice-over-Internet protocol apps to reduce talk time charged to your bill from AT&T, Apple’s sole U.S. wireless carrier.

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Apple’s strong iPhone and iPad sales dazzled Wall Street this week, but an even bigger surprise perhaps came from sales of the company’s line of Mac computers in its third business quarter. The computer maker announced record sales of 3.47 million desktop and notebook products, exceeding the previous quarterly high mark by more than 100,000 units.

Mac sales grew 33 percent year over year, which Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said easily exceeded IDC’s pre-earnings release estimate of 22 percent growth in this year’s second quarter.

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IBM announced Thursday its zEnterprise mainframe server, which it described as “the most powerful and energy-efficient mainframe ever.” The Armonk, N.Y.-based company called the new zEnterprise “the most significant design change in 20 years for the IBM mainframe.” At the same time, the company unveiled a new systems design that allows mainframe, POWER7 and System x servers to be managed as one virtual system.

IBM said its new systems design is the result of an R&D investment of more than $1.5 billion, combining the new zEnterprise mainframe with a new zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and Unified Resource Manager. The resulting system, IBM said, can reduce cost of ownership by 55 percent and lower acquisition costs by 40 percent.

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