By Phil Britt

Google’s Nexus One was one of the most talked about Internet-enabled devices unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, but it was only one of several devices expected to create more demand for bandwidth in the mobile arena.

The Nexus One phone features a 4GB removable SD card (expandable to 32GB) and a 1GHz processor. Google referred to device as a “superphone” during the unveiling.

“This is a first, not with the idea of Google and cellphones, but that Google is now officially in the equipment business,” says Jeffery Kagan, an Atlanta-based wireless telecom analyst. “This is a big deal. How successful will Google be is the question. We have not seen them market or sell anything that you can hold in your hand. This will be a new adventure for the company. With the attention it is receiving I think it looks like the world is ready to accept a Google device.”

The wireless marketplace has been reinventing itself over the last three years, Kagan adds. Until three years ago, the market was fairly steady, with regular handsets accounting for about 85 percent of the market and smartphones about 15 percent. Then Apple jumped in with iPhone and that started the gears shifting. So the industry looks much different today. The regular handset side has stalled (at least, in the US), while the smart phone side is growing rapidly, now comprising nearly half of the market.

“It looks like going forward the majority of attention will be on the new competitive battle between Apple and Google, the two newcomers in wireless,” Kagan says.

Apple won one round of the battle at CES. The MOTO Development Group, which develops products and product/service strategies for startups and Fortune 500 companies, selected the iPhone as the winner of a touchscreen performance test between the Google Nexus One, the Apple iPhone, the Motorola Droid, and the HTC Verizon Droid Eris.

at the edge of the screen. Last in the line-up was the Motorola Droid, which demonstrated significant wavy artifacts or “stair-stepping.”

Apple wasn’t sitting still as Google introduced the Nexus One. According to the Consumer Electronics Association, which sponsors CES, the iLounge pavilion at the show included 100 companies and featured the latest apps and accessories for iPod, iPhone and Mac products – the largest display of its kind in CES history.

And, of course, in addition to the devices unveiled at CES, the highly anticipated Apple iPad was unveiled at the end of January. Apple had worked out deals with book publisher HaperCollins to provide e-books and the New York Times and other publishers to provide other content for the tablet device. The device is expected to run on the iPhone operating system and may cannibalize some iPhone sales as a result.

That doesn’t spell disaster for the iPhone, by any means. Mobile applications for the iPhone