A new report from Juniper Research says ‘direct carrier billing’ - enabling consumers to charge purchases to their mobile phone account - could transform the mobile content market. It’s found that third-party content providers with direct carrier billing have seen a five to six-fold increase in conversion rates compared with credit card billing.

In addition, average transaction values are also higher.

Affiliate marketing specialist Tradedoubler has launched an application-only affiliate program with betting and gaming site Winner.com.

It’s described as the sector’s first app-only affiliate programme and will offer commission payments to affiliates who encourage users to download and use the ‘Slots Farm’ app.

We're back from Mobile World Congress 2013 with the latest news for the UK mobile phone industry.

Today's conversation covers new handsets, forthcoming operating systems, apps, mobile payments, VoIP, 4G and Facebook's two-tier internet.

Ofcom has published a report that compares the coverage, take-up, usage, price and choice of fixed and mobile broadband services in the UK with services available in other European countries.

It’s known as the European Broadband Scorecard and measures progress towards the UK government’s ambition that the UK should have the ‘best superfast broadband network’ (usually defined as faster than 30Mbps) of any major European country by 2015.

Mark Bridge writes:

At Mobile World Congress 2012 I spent quite a bit of time talking about quad-core smartphones. The year before had seen a fair amount of 3D screen technology. Back in 2010 it was the growth of apps. This year I wasn’t hearing so much about mobile device innovation.