Mark Bridge writes:

James Rosewell shows me a colourful roll of paper that's the width of an iPhone but well over three metres long. When I look closer, I can see it's a printed copy of the Wall Street Journal's mobile website. That's a lot of scrolling to do... and a pretty unfriendly user experience for anyone reading the news online. Why does it work so badly?

Here’s an edited transcript of our new monthly podcast, broadcast on 30th January 2015.

[Iain Graham]: Hello, it's Friday 30th January 2015. Welcome to this month's edition of The Fonecast. That’s right, you heard correctly: we’ve temporarily moved to a monthly format. If you’d like to join 51Degrees in sponsoring the podcast and returning us to weekly programmes, please get in touch via our website. Now, on with the show.

Mark Bridge writes:

What’s the secret of Apple’s success? That’s the question I was asked earlier this week by LBC radio during a report on Apple’s impressive iPhone sales and its record quarterly results.

So here are six reasons I think Apple is doing so well at the moment.

Mark Bridge writes:

If you listen to this week’s edition of The Fonecast - in which we predict what’ll be happening in the mobile telecoms industry during 2015 - you’ll hear James Rosewell say that BlackBerry’s handset business is doomed. Well, actually that’s not quite true.

Jon Carter of Deutsche Telekom has provided us with his ‘Connected Home’ predictions for 2015:

Connected home products and services rely on different communication standards, be it ZigBee, HomeMatic or Z-Wave. Only platforms which both handle established standards and are able to learn new protocols will hold their ground in the market in 2015. Customers don’t want to be limited in their product choices or care about compatibility issues. Integrating any device into a connected home setup needs to be smooth and simple.