Pocket Picks round-up: July 2nd - Archos reveal iPad killer, RIM building ‘superphone’, iPhone narrowly wins security contest, T-Mobile goes unlimited

Just how much will it take for a competitor to knock Apple from the top of the tablet tree?

Given that even the most high-spec Android tablets seem incapable of stealing much of the market from the iPad 2, despite having more features and an OS that’s specifically designed for tablets (rather than adapted), not one of them seems capable of capturing the public’s imagination as much as Apple has.

Still, this hasn’t stopped more and more companies trying, with HTC having just entered the fight with its Flyer and Sony preparing two unusual designs in the S1 and S2 for later in the year.

Another company that hopes to wrest control of the market away from the big fruit is Archos with its new Generation 9 machines, but is more power what people are really after when it comes to tablets?

Archos hasn’t popped up much in the headlines for the past year or so, but the French company’s latest ‘Generation 9’ tablets are likely to get quite a bit of pageviews in the future.

The reason behind this is that it is (currently) the fastest tablet that’s been announced, packing in a dual-core 1.5GHz Texas Instruments CPU that, the company claims, makes it 50 per cent faster than Apple’s iPad 2.

What’s striking is that despite having a huge 250GB hard-drive and the latest version of Honeycomb installed the Archos 101 Gen 9 is priced identically to Apple’s machine at £399 - no doubt because those priced higher tend to fail miserably.

The new 101, and its smaller cousin the 80, will be out in September.

The stories of Android viruses may have iPhone users feeling a little smug, but it’s wise not be too gloaty around your droid-owning cousins if Symantec’s recent security report is to be believed.

While Android naturally lost out to iOS as you might expect, thanks to the lax security in the Android Market, it wasn’t quite the foregone conclusion as headlines would make you believe.

Indeed, as far as OS security goes, Symantec found over 200 loopholes in iOS compared to just 18 in Android. As a consolation though, the company noted that Apple’s response time when it came to identifying and isolating serious threats was faster than the big ‘G’.

Let’s stay on the security theme for a bit longer with news that Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is now shipping Android phones to its customers with McAfee anti-virus software pre-installed.

The firm has a history of providing phones with security software, having already packaged McAfee software with the Forma devices back in 2004, so in a way this isn’t that much of surprising development.

But still, while there’s no suggestion that UK carriers will follow NTT DoCoMo’s lead and start packaging similar software with each new Galaxy or Desire, it isn’t great publicity for the platform when anti-virus software is considered a requirement.

RIM’s been having a hard time in the US lately. Once the main company behind every businesses smartphone supplies, the Canadian firm’s been losing market share and price for months now.

The PlayBook looks to be going the way of most iPad challengers (the history books) going by recent sales, but the company isn’t going to leave its passing without some kind of a legacy.

Instead, it’s apparently working on a new ‘superphone’ that uses the tablet’s QNX operating system and possibly a 1.2GHz single-core processor (not that super, then).

If true, it could well mean that the company will look to replace the existing BlackBerry OS currently used for its handset range.

Rumour: Samsung to deploy WebOS handsets in the future?

HP is looking to extend its WebOS mobile platform out to other handset manufactorers in the future - that was the message from HP CEO, Leo Apotheker, when interviewed by Bloomberg this week.

“I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations”

Naturally, just saying that they were in talks with a number of companies about licensing the product isn’t good enough for us tech-folk, so it’s good then that multiple sources close to the two parties have told Bloomberg that none-other than Samsung is one of the companies HP is currently speaking to.

Given that the South Korean firm is already a stalwart user of Android (being, as it is, the maker of the Nexus S), has its own OS, bada, and even a Windows Phone, we wouldn’t be too surprised if the company didn’t dabble with one or two handsets running a new OS.