Apple's iPhone most popular item on eBay in 2010

Apple's iPhone beat out Barbie and the World Cup to take the coveted spot of most popular item on eBay's Top Shopped 2010 list, while the iPad came in fifth.

eBay compiles the annual list by analyzing sale and search data from the year to track top shopping trends.
Over 1.63 million iPhone 4 related items were sold on eBay in 2010, according to eBay. The iPad and its related items saw over 600,000 sales this year, enough to take fifth place for the year.
Barbie came in second with 1.17 million sales. "Military jackets" took third place, while the classic Hot Wheels toys came in fourth. Rounding out the list were the World Cup, The Beatles, Silly Bandz, Alice in Wonderland and the New Orleans Saints.
The list demonstrates significant gains by Apple, as last year's list did not include any technology items. Sales of iPhone items this year nearly tripled the sales of last year's top seller, "The Yankees," which sold 551,230 items in 2009.
Apple's products have topped several year-end lists as 2010 comes to a close. Time magazine gave the iPad the title of No. 1 gadget of 2010, while the MacBook Air, iPhone 4 and Apple TV all made the top 10 list.
The iPad, iOS and iPhone were three of the top four tech topics on Twitter this year. Apple rival Google took second place with its Android mobile operating system.
And journalist Walt Mossberg ranked the iPad as his best reviewed product of 2010, calling it "amazing." The iPhone 4 tied for third place with the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S.

Samsung Galaxy Tab now available through AT&T

Samsung Galaxy Tab – the latest iPad competitor to hit the quickly-crowding tablet market – is already available through Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. And as of this weekend, the sleek, flatscreen device is also available on AT&T. The AT&T-issue Galaxy Tab will sell for $649; consumers will not have to sign up for any sort of contract to get their hands on the machine.

PC World has a pretty good breakdown of the data plans available for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it's well worth clicking through if you're considering purchasing the device. Here's the CliffsNotes: AT&T offers the cheapest monthly data plan, at $15 for 250MB. By comparison, T-Mobile charges $25 for 200MB of data per month. (T-Mobile, of course, offers the Galaxy Tab at the subsidized price of $400 if consumers sign a data contract.)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has earned generally solid marks from reviewers, despite its 7-inch screen, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs has publicly derided as too small for most users. In a positive review of the Galaxy Tab in the New York Times, David Pogue noted that "Samsung sweated the details on this thing. The screen is gorgeous. The touch response is immediate and reliable. The whole thing is superfast and a pleasure to use."

Still, for now the tablet market seems to belong to Apple, which has sold about 7.5 million iPad units in less than a year. On Friday, Brian Marshall, an analyst with the firm Gleacher and Company, stirred up a media tempest when he predicted that Apple will release in 2011 an "iPad 2." Apple has not commented on the rumor, but the company has in the past refreshed its products on a regular basis.