Last week, I was in San Francisco attending Deutsche Bank’s 2010 Technology Conference (September 14-16).  The following post is a high-level summary of my key takeaways, intended to inform you of key industry themes and changes within a brief reading (rather than a lengthy detailed vendor-by-vendor report). 

Dell has raised its bid for data-storage firm 3PAR early Friday, matching Hewlett-Packard's $1.8 billion offer. 3PAR said it had accepted Dell's new $27-per-share offer. So there it is 3PAR goes to DELL.

The deal will have to pass through the typical SEC regulatory approval process. If the deal is approved and determined to not be anti-competitive for the IT industry ( and specifically the storage industry ) the companies will try to close by the end of the year. At that time 3PAR would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, the computer maker said.

For years rumored to be eying the US smartphone market, Dell is reportedly preparing a barrage of mobile devices ranging from a Windows Phone 7 smartphone and four Google Android smartphones to two Android tablets starting this summer and stretching into the middle of next year, according to details, including photos and detailed specs, leaked to gadget website Engadget.com.

The Windows Phone 7, reportedly dubbed the Dell Lightning, is a GSM phone that sports a 4.1-inch WVGA OLED display, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 1GB of flash memory, a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of storage on an internal microSD card, receivers for GPS and FM radio, among other features. The 3G phone will apparently not be exclusive to either AT&T or T-Mobile, so there are likely to be two models initially and speculation that an LTE version for Verizon later next year. Like the Palm Pre Plus the Lightning's display slides up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard.

I don't know about you, but I'm suffering from Android burnout. Yes, I know it's just an operating system, which makes that not unlike saying I have Windows 7 burnout. But then nearly every hardware vendor and wireless carrier isn't hyping a new device that runs on Windows 7 this week, are they?

On Tuesday, Google kicked off what might as well be called Android Week with an announcement that wasn't exactly what it had been hyped to be. Observers had expected that the new smartphone Google is pushing, Nexus One, would be designed by Google -- making it the first real Google Phone. But Google was quick to point out that the heavy-lifting was done by HTC, and it just pitched in to ensure that the phone took full advantage of Android's potential.

It looks like Dell is ready to take a stab at the U.S. smartphone market. But while Dell will likely find the going rough, the phone will apparently land the Android operating system on yet another cellular network -- AT&T's. As if Google's blossoming mobile OS really needed more momentum.

Since early 2007, when Michael Dell returned to the company he founded to lift its sagging performance, there has been much talk of smartphones playing a part in Dell's future. All PC makers have been struggling, but Dell has suffered more than most. Smartphones offer a tempting opportunity, though the competition is increasingly fierce.

Microsoft may be turning up the heat on the search-engine front with the launch of Bing, but Google scored points of its own today, as Acer announced that it will offer a netbook that runs on Google's Android operating system.

Are we seeing the start of a new OS faceoff? The forthcoming netbook, a version of the Windows XP-based Aspire One, is expected in the third quarter, according to Jim Wong, Acer's president of IT products. Wong, who spoke at the Computex trade show in Taipei, praised Android's "incredibly fast wireless connection to the Internet."  Like the XP-based Aspire One, the new computer will use Intel's Atom processor.