Today’s mobile news roundup features: last night’s Kindle Fire sneak-peek; Samsung facing an antitrust probe in South Korea; Microsoft to hire 1000 people to boost mobile efforts in China; and Android ICS now in more devices.

Kindle Fire 2 makes appearance at NFL

If you watched the NFL season kickoff between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants on NBC last night, you might have seen the Kindle Fire 2 which is set to be officially unveiled today.  The almost minute-long commercial features a lot of Amazon boxes being delivered but what stands out is the tablet used in the ad.  Based on the ad, and somehow confirming earlier rumors, Amazon might be unveiling Kindle Fires of varying sizes.

Whatever Amazon has up their sleeves, we’ll just have to wait a few more hours, as their press event is at 10:30 a.m. PT in Santa Monica, California.

Samsung faces antitrust probe in South Korea

The Fair Trade Commission, South Korea’s antitrust watchdog, launched an antitrust probe against Samsung Electronics for suspicion of abusing their dominant position in the wireless market to disadvantage Apple Inc.  The investigation was commissioned after Apple submitted a complaint stating that Samsung breached fair trade laws.

“We are reviewing whether allegations in the complaint lodged by Apple are true,” said a Fair Trade Commission official, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. “Apple filed a complaint earlier this year that Samsung is breaching fair trade laws,” the official said.

Samsung denied the FTC’s allegations stating that the company always met “obligations to the fair licensing of its telecommunications standards-related patents.”

Microsoft to hire 1000 people to boost mobile efforts in China

In an effort to boost mobile operations in China, Microsoft announced that they will add 1,000 more employees in China, and would boost research and development spending by 15 percent.  Microsoft is pushing Windows Phone 8 smartphones in the Chinese market, which is currently dominated by Apple’s iPhone and the horde of Android smartphones.

“We respect that we have two players in the market which have a strong role, and we feel ready to attack and have different offers to basically change the game plan on that one,” said Microsoft’s CEO for China, Ralph Haupter, at a news conference.

Android ICS now in more devices

According to a post in the Android Developer blog, Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich is now found on over a fifth of activated Android devices.  Android 4.0.x is now on 20.9 percent of all Android devices but Gingerbread or Android 2.3.x is still the predominant version at 57.5 percent.  Though Jelly Bean or Android 4.1 is quite new, it is now on 1.2 percent of Android devices in the wild.  The data showed significant improvement but it can’t be denied that Android’s number one issue is fragmented roll outs of their updates.