We’ll need to wait for the company’s earnings later this month for the final numbers, but Motorola has now provided some preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 2011 that indicate smartphones accounted for more than fifty percent of all the mobiles devices it shipped. Specifically, Motorola estimates that it shipped a total of 10.5 million devices in the quarter, 5.3 million of which are smartphones (there’s no further breakdown beyond that). That’s up from 4.8 million smartphones in the previous quarter, although the number of total mobile devices slipped from 11.6 million. The company also says it expects "modest profitability" with estimated sales of $3.4 billion for the quarter, and it reaffirmed that it expects Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition to close in "early 2012" if all goes as planned. Head on past the break for the press release.

If you’re looking for maximum exposure for your developer event, might as well host it during the same week at CES. For bonus points, have it in the same city. That’s precisely what AT&T has done for its 2012 Developer Summit, and while the majority of the sessions won’t tickle the fancy of everyday consumers, there’s one slot in particular that’s giving us pause. Titled "A Metro Style Hemi," an afternoon session at the event will showcase a Windows 8 tablet, reportedly powered by one of Qualcomm’s many chips. There’s no details on whether or not a physical unit will be on hand with an active LTE radio, but it’s useful to know that Microsoft’s already talking with the carrier about hosting such devices. After all, we’re still believing that Win8-based tablets are a few months out (at the very least), but if AT&T’s already got one in its lab for testing, we could be looking at a little LTE + Windows 8 love sooner than anticipated. Let’s just hope it doesn’t pull a Jetstream on the pricing, eh?