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 Are smartphones and tablets out already, 2013 looks to be the year of 'tween devices and watch-type things as the first of the big guns are ready to launch their Spring season line-ups. 

 

 

HTC At Bat

Hope you had a good and restful Presidents' Day, as the mobile big guns are getting ready to fire again. First up is HTC which is teasing a countdown site and a series of images on Twitter, hinting at many things to come at its Cedar Lake, New York event on Tuesday (with a matching event in London for Europe to track), starting 10AM EST.

Hopefully it'll have better luck than several previous tech New York launches that have been cancelled by various freak weather events. Hidden under cloth, there are 12 devices in one picture and a close up with the date in another. A new HTC One is likely to be the lead device, but other images have shown off camera lenses, suggesting a high-power photography device and does one of the undercover gadgets have a watch strap or is it just a trick of the light?

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HTC is doing a good job of teasing gadgets Steve Jobs-style

We'll have a full report on what's new including the rather obvious tablet hiding in the photo, and what chance it has on impacting on Samsung's Android dominance and on trying to gain more market share in America. 

Samsung Bring it Fourth in March

While Mobile World Congress comes first in a couple of weeks, it looks like Samsung wants the limelight for itself a little later with word of a new Unpacked event due in the middle of March, likely on the 14th. The star of that show will be the Galaxy S4, with Samsung apparently placing massive orders for a 100 million units. 

With the Galaxy name appearing in all shapes and sizes of device, you have to wonder what else Samsung will add to the mix. The company recently showed off the Galaxy Grand, an emerging market phone/tablet in India, that comes with a 5-inch touch screen, 1.2 GHz dual core processor, 2-megapixel front and 8-megapixel rear camera and 8GB of RAM. 

That, Nokia's Asha 310  and other budget devices hint at the coming battle for 100s of millions of sales in new territory, but the Web persists in rumor-mongering that Apple will deign to play in this space, of which there is, naturally, no official word. Expect more events from the other big players to be announced soon.