It’s been blame, buy-outs and goodbyes this week, as the great & good (as well as the not-so-great) reshuffle in an increasingly competitive mobile market.  Microsoft’s finalising of their Danger deal ended with the software giant declaring they’d make Windows Mobile “fun”, words even less comfortable with each other than Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston locked in a bathysphere.  Meanwhile Google came under fire from politicians for supposedly costing government coffers in the region of $10bn; their open-access demands were enough to put potential bidders off the recent 700MHz auction, allegedly.  Then there’s AT&T, who have been saying goodbye to various extraneous execs acquired over the years from company acquisitions.  You obviously have to spend money before you can save it: a pre-tax cost of $374m in redundancy payouts will take the shine off their quarterly financial report this Tuesday.

Still, the carrier has their Mobile TV launch to look forward to, and not long to wait if leaked news is to be believed.  Apparently you’ll be able to sign up to AT&T Mobile TV on May 4th, priced between $13 and $30 a month.  If that isn’t businesslike enough for you, new details on RIM’s upcoming 9000-series smartphone have suggested the HSDPA handset will have a front-mounted camera and a new, bigger battery.  Useful, when internal sources have said that prototype battery life “sucks”.

Meanwhile, the FCC has been busy clearing upcoming handsets - both new and newly-tweaked - with HTC, HP and Sony Ericsson all seeing models approved for sale in the US.  Sony Ericsson look to be on target for the planned Q2 launch of their touchscreen G700, while HP’s long-awaited iPAQ 900-series smartphone is also one step closer to release.  HTC’s Touch Dual, using the company’s capacitive touchscreen as well as a slide-out 20-key keyboard and US-spec HSDPA, will apparently be dropping as a Best Buy exclusive.

OpenMoko have also been in touch, with pricing details of their FreeRunner handset.  Based on an open-source Linux platform, $399 will get you a device ideal for software development, and many are eyeing the FreeRunner up as a potential Android test mule.

Finally, there’s still a couple of weeks to go until PHONE Mag jets off to London to cover HTC’s special event on May 6th, but we’ve already got some more rumors as to what the company might be announcing.  So far it was assumed that the Dream - HTC’s first smartphone based on Android - would be star of the event, but now a new model (or models) has turned up in a group photo.  Prototype, fake or something fresh for the mobile market?  We may have to wait until May 6th to find out.