Four large mobile phone resellers said on Monday that they would team up to create a purchasing alliance that resells more than 50 million phones every year, as many as the world’s biggest telecoms operators. U.S. electronics retailer Radio Shack, Danish wholesaler and supply chain manager Dangaard, U.S. phone reseller Brightstar and Dubai-based Axiom together have access to 70,000 points of sale in 52 countries. The alliance will be called Braxda Telecom. By joining forces, the four companies, which remain independent, will exceed the purchasing power of the biggest international telecommunications operators bar Vodafone of Britain.

What would you do with $612.5 million? If you’re NTP, first you have to pay your lawyers for grinding out a settlement in the five-year patent dispute with Research In Motion over the BlackBerry mobile email device. Once that’s done, the patent-holding company founded by Don Stout and the late Tom Campana will be sitting on a sizable war chest that could come in handy as it attempts to appeal its recent defeats at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and looks over the rest of the wireless email market. After that, there’s a chance NTP will use its hefty arsenal to go after other companies. The most prominent name bandied about on “who’s next for NTP” lists is the tech industry’s wealthiest company, Microsoft–though such a lawsuit seems a bit farfetched to tech analysts and legal experts. But speculating about new lawsuit targets could be a moot point if NTP doesn’t hold on to its patents.

Mobile antivirus researchers and antivirus companies are at loggerheads over access to code for a PC-to-mobile Trojan. The Mobile Antivirus Researchers Association said that it had received proof-of-concept code last week for Crossover, which MARA claims is malicious software that can jump from a Windows desktop machine to a Windows Mobile Pocket PC handheld. Antivirus companies and researchers usually collaborate by sharing code with competitors. This reciprocal arrangement seems to have broken down on this occasion, with several major antivirus companies, including Sophos and McAfee, complaining that they don’t yet have access to the code.

In response to questions from the news media, Palm has issued the following statement:

We have long believed that a settlement between these parties would be the eventual outcome. We have remained focused on competing in the market by delivering choice to our customers based upon open, standards-based products that win in the marketplace. Palm’s partnerships with Good Technology and Microsoft are attracting a growing number of customers. In the United States, we are gaining share of the smartphone market faster than any other supplier, including RIM. We think our momentum will continue as more and more companies understand and deploy our solutions.

What’s good for Research in Motion may not be good for Palm, which could end up selling fewer smartphones now that its rival has settled a dispute that threatened the future of its BlackBerry devices. Shares of Palm slumped nearly 4 percent while BlackBerry maker Research in Motion picked up as much as 19 percent in extended trade after RIM announced it had put an end to a 4-year-old dispute by agreeing to pay patent holding firm NTP $612.5 million.

Handheld video gaming has always been a few steps behind its console counterpart, but that’s proven to be a small trade-off for the benefits of portability and, to some, even part of the appeal. So, while most gamers are now enjoying their PSPs and Micros and DSs, Engadget takes a little trip back in time to look at some of the handhelds that came before them.

Research In Motion Limited announced support for Cisco Unified CallManager 5.0 with the BlackBerry Wireless LAN solution to provide on-campus mobile users with IP telephony capabilities. Cisco and RIM have completed interoperability testing between the BlackBerry 7270 handsets and Cisco Unified CallManager 5.0 via SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Together, BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the Blackberry 7270 can provide IT departments and users with an on-campus solution that delivers the same proven security, manageability, productivity and usability benefits that made BlackBerry the wireless platform of choice for millions of enterprise customers. In addition to supporting wireless email, messaging, organizer, Internet and intranet applications, the BlackBerry WLAN solution also provides Voice over Internet Protocol telephony capabilities to BlackBerry 7270 handsets through SIP, allowing users to receive and make calls anywhere the enterprise provides IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN coverage.

Organizations looking to enable greater mobile productivity for the estimated 50 million on-campus mobile workers in the U.S. can now do so through their existing WLAN deployments using the BlackBerry WLAN solution. Research In Motion Limited is showcasing the BlackBerry WLAN solution, including the 802.11-enabled BlackBerry 7270 handheld, at VoiceCon this week. The BlackBerry 7270 wireless handheld connects through BlackBerry Enterprise Server to provide support for secure, push-based email, instant messaging, organizer, Internet and intranet applications and to make and receive wireless VoIP calls through enterprise telephone systems via the industry-standard SIP (session initiation protocol).

Invoking the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, Federal law enforcement has tried to track the location of cell phones without providing any evidence of criminal activity. The Justice Department’s surveillance requests were denied. Cell phones constantly broadcast their location even when no call is in progress. The FBI and other police agencies often seek access to that location-tracking information, which can reveal the cell phone owner’s movements. But only in the last few months have judges begun to scrutinize what have traditionally been routine tracking requests and concluding that police must show at least some evidence of actual criminal activity.

When Joe Ryan started talking about his plans to open a brick-and-mortar store filled almost exclusively with iPod accessories, people said he was out of his mind. After four successful years heading up an Apple retail site, Think Different Store, the idea of launching a walk-in store sounded backward, if not risky. Now, however, with one busy 3,000-square-foot iPod accessory store and another one in the works, Ryan just might be leading a new trend.