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IDC is predicting some big growth figures for smartphones over this year and towards 2015.

According to the company’s latest market forecast, smartphone shipments will climb to 472 million units in 2011, which will be 55% up on the 305 million shipped last year.

Extrapolating their data further to 2015, the IDC analysts expect 2011′s figure to double up, reaching 982 million by the close of 2015.

This year the smartphone market will expand at four times the rate of the overall mobile market, as smartphones become gradually more affordable and cheaper data plans are brought out by network operators.

Kevin Restivo, Senior Research Analyst, commented: “The smartphone floodgates are open wide. Mobile phone users around the world are turning in their ‘talk-and-text’ devices for smartphones as these devices allow users to perform daily tasks like shopping and banking from anywhere.”

“The growth trend is particularly pronounced in emerging markets where adoption is still in its early days. As a result, the growth in regions such as Asia/Pacific and Latin America, will be dramatic over the coming years.”

Turning to operating systems, IDC doesn’t really need a functioning crystal ball to predict the further decline of Symbian, the OS which Nokia has eschewed in favour of Windows Phone 7 for the future.

And the prediction that Android will grow and stay clearly at the top isn’t a hard one to make either, with IDC reckoning that Google’s platform will account for 40% of the smartphone market in the second half of 2011.

More interesting was IDC’s view on Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and iOS. The analyst firm is cautious about Apple’s OS, stating that “after an initial explosive growth period, iOS is expected to grow at a more modest pace throughout the latter half of the forecast as the smartphone market matures and diversifies”.

It’s pretty much the same prediction for BlackBerry – its market share will remain roughly the same, with a slight decline through to 2015, even though shipment volumes will continue to increase.

And while Windows Phone 7 is most definitely floundering now, IDC thinks that as Nokia support comes into play along with the Mango update for the operating system at the end of the year, Microsoft can expect a small market share to get much larger.

In fact, by 2015 IDC predicts that Windows Phone 7 will be the second place OS behind Android and will have a market share in excess of 20%.

Three has announced that it is now carrying the HTC ChaCha as well as Vodafone.

The ChaCha is a social network oriented phone with a dedicated Facebook button for swift updates, photo uploads and so forth. It has a full Qwerty keyboard for tapping out those status updates, a 2.6 inch touchscreen, 800MHz processor and a 5 megapixel camera running Android Gingerbread.

Sylvia Chind, Head of Devices at Three, commented: “Facebook on Three receives over 38 million page views every day. It’s because of this popularity that we’re delighted to be stocking the HTC ChaCha.”

“Not only will our customers be able to access their favourite Facebook features at the touch of a button, but coupled with Three’s all-you-can-eat data they can surf their favourite site without having to worry about going over any internet allowances.”

The ChaCha on the One Plan costs £29 per month with 2000 minutes, 5000 texts and all-you-can-eat data (subject to throttling for heavy usage).

Alternatively, you can grab on PAYG for an up-front fee of £250.

The HTC ChaCha is now available to purchase from Phones4u.

The social networking oriented handset which features a dedicated Facebook button will set you back £300 on PAYG (pricey compared to other pre-order tags we’ve seen).

Although only contract deals are currently available on the Phones4u site. These start at £20 per month on Vodafone, with the smartphone free, and a package consisting of 100 minutes and 500 texts.

The ChaCha has a compact 2.6 inch display with a full Qwerty keyboard nestled beneath it, along with a 5 megapixel camera (with LED flash), A-GPS, bluetooth and wi-fi. It runs Android 2.3.

Orange has launched a “connected” contract deal whereby a customer can pick up both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 on the same monthly tariff.

The two year deal secures you a smartphone and tablet with 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 2GB of data allowance across both devices.

And the cost? For a 16GB iPhone 4 and 16GB 3G iPad 2, there’s an up-front fee of £149, with a monthly fee of £65. The total outlay comes in at £1709 which, as you’d hope, is cheaper than getting them on separate contracts with Orange.

If you want more storage on your devices, then the up-front cost rises to £349 for a 32GB smartphone and 64GB tablet. Existing Orange customers do get a slight price cut, though, and can knock £50 off the initial fee.

While this is a network first, we’re not sure that the spectre of £65 per month – on top of a considerable initial outlay – is going to tempt too many people. We may well be wrong, however.

It’ll be interesting to see if other operators follow suit with their own perhaps more competitive bundles. Or if the concept gets expanded from Apple to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S II and Tab.

Of course, you could always just wait for an Asus PadFone contract, the slate which comes with a smartphone tucked away on board.

Acer has repainted its Liquid Mini smartphone with four new colours for the summer.

The four colours are cherry, lagoon, pearl and steel, which apparently “evoke summer, vacation and the longing for relax and have fun with friends (sic)”.

We’re not quite sure how steel is reminiscent of lounging on a sunny summer beach, unless there’s a naval base nearby and a battleship happens to be looming on the horizon.

There’s more to the freshly daubed compact handsets than outer apperances suggest, however, as the new Liquid Mini comes with Gingerbread, plus the new Acer 4.2 UI on top.

The latter boasts widgets on the home screen, a revamped virtual keyboard and the ability to press the Home key to flick swiftly between apps.

Acer’s SocialJogger 2.0 app now has support for Flickr and Plurk on top of Facebook and Twitter.

The Liquid Mini boasts a 3.2 inch display, 600MHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, GPS, wi-fi and 3G.

The Nokia E6 is now up for pre-order on the Nokia website.

Sim-free, the smartphone will set you back £349, or you can get the handset for free on a monthly contract starting at £25 per month.

The E6 comes with a 2.5 inch VGA touchscreen and a full Qwerty keyboard below, an 8 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom that does 720p recording, and 8GB of memory (with SD expansion up to 32GB).

The smartphone runs the Symbian Anna operating system, the latest version of Symbian that comes with a number of tweaks including a faster browser and a split-screen view (be interesting to see how that performs on a small display such as the E6′s).

While pre-ordering is live now, the release of the Nokia E6 isn’t expected until the end of next month.