The third annual MobileBeat conference will be held July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. This conference will introduce a new two-day format that offers expanded content and networking. The Age of the Superphone has begun, and three camps—carriers, device makers, and software developers—are all vying for dominion over consumers’ pocketbooks. MobileBeat 2010 is all about who among these players will make money, how and why.

The primary focus this year is the new form factors–tablets, 4G phones, HD TVs, connected devices—and the operating systems that power them. The industry’s biggest PC maker, HP, is buying Palm, which could potentially let it operate independently of the new mobile OS Android. At MobileBeat, HP Product Chief Phil McKinney will deliver a keynote on the future of mobile software innovation.

On another front, phone carriers are investing billions into a 4G infrastructure that will increase bandwidth by an order of magnitude, in a time when cloud computing appears to be reducing the relevance from of carriers and device makers. How will AT&T, Verizon and Sprint remain profitable over the coming years? Then, there’s the rising power of software. Companies like Facebook, Admob and Twitter are becoming increasingly important in the mobile world. Who will own the user relationship, and what alliances will be struck between social, geo-local web companies and mobile infrastructure?

MobileBeat also hosts an annual startup competition. The goal of this year’s startup competition is to showcase the top 20 companies with the coolest mobile ideas for the coming 4G world. Twenty contenders have emerged as finalists from a field of more than 200 nominees. VentureBeat readers singled out Snaptu and Aava Mobile as favorites in an online poll, earning them finalist spots in the application and service categories respectively. MobileBeat’s advisory panel hand-picked eighteen others, which will present their winning ideas live onstage in front of mobile influencers, investors and press for a chance to win a Tesla award.