This week in Orlando the wireless industry's hoi polloi and hoity toady will gather for the twice-annual CTIA exhibition (why the entire consumer electronics industry manages to squeeze its business into a single CES but the cellphone people need two shows is one of those "why is Kim Kardashian famous" mysteries — but I digress). I could postulate on what the major handset makers will do, but we'll know for sure in a few scant days — and so will you. Or, do a Google search on "Mobile World Congress 2011 new phones" to get a glimmer of the goodies likely to be launched this week. Maybe I've been doing this too long, but I'm getting a bit cynical about significant further cellphone innovations. Over the next six months or so, well be seeing more dual core phones to follow the Motorola Atrix (perhaps some that also will serve as the core for a laptop accessory like Atrix), and a lot more LTE phones, and a few of both — perhaps the iPhone 5, for instance. But there'll likely be no revolutionary technology breakthroughs at CTIA, which begs the question: Have we reached the cellphone Peter Principal? Are all the great cellphone breakthroughs taken? Let's discuss.

While ordering my weekly supply of bagels and lox at my local kosher-style deli, Andrew, one of the managers with whom I am acquainted (we're fellow Met fans, God help us) asked me an odd question. He'd heard about the new iPad 2 and wanted to know if any of the other tablet PCs he had heard of were "better." Over the next few weeks and months, the tech and mainstream media will try their best to answer that question. They'll make a big deal how this tablet is less or more expensive than iPad/iPad 2, how it's got better or worse this or that specs, more of this or that input jack, that it does X or Y better or worse, how the operating systems are easier or harder or more or less intuitive, etc. This is all nonsense. You cannot compare the iPad to any other tablet. Find out why after the jump.

There have been some weird news reports this week about how Apple now wants a 30 percent cut of any goods sold from within an app, or that developers have to sell their goods through iTunes with Apple taking 30...

In the TV business, a hit TV show is said to "jump the shark" when it can no longer sustain the qualities that made it a hit in the first place, and so resorts to some sort of weird stunt in what is usually a failed effort to maintain fading ratings. This week, the cellphone business may have jumped the shark with two bizarre events. Last week, Sprint unwrapped the Kyocera-made Echo, a cell phone designed somewhat like a trundle bed. Echo looks like a thicker version of a regular slab cell, but the top 3.5-inch screen top flips up and over and clicks alongside a second 3.5-inch screen pancaked underneath to create a single 4.7-inch square screen with an eighth-inch bezel seam in the middle. One program can be run across both screens as if it were a single display, or each screen can run a separate, independent program. Then, today (Friday, February 11), and tomorrow, T-Mobile will give anyone who signs a two-year deal any phone in the store for free, including the carrier's $100 4G models. That's right — competition in the cellphone business has gotten to the point that T-Mobile has been prompted to actually give away its phones. These are unlikely to be isolated retail or product "jump the shark" incidents. We're sure to see more cell strangeness as the World Mobile Congress convenes next week in Barcelona, a potential Shark Week sans the Discovery Channel cameras, which we'll explore after our own jump.