Last year’s annual total of 5.9 trillion SMS messages worldwide will reach 9.4 trillion messages by 2016, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. However, other messaging use will also increase, which means the SMS share of global mobile messaging traffic will fall from 64.1% last year to 42.1% in 2016.

Meanwhile instant messaging traffic across mobile networks will increase from 1.6 trillion messages in 2011 to 7.7 trillion messages in 2016, giving it a 34.6% share of traffic.

Samsung has announced a new music service at the same time as its new Android-powered Galaxy SIII flagship smartphone has gone on sale.

The Music Hub, which is available in the UK and other European markets, offers a combination of music streaming and cloud-based online music storage. It’s currently exclusive to the Samsung Galaxy SIII, although other devices will be added in the near future.

It’s been running a trial scheme in partnership with payment processor Elavon since January.

The total value of mobile transactions worldwide will exceed $171.5 billion (£109 billion) this year, a 61.9% increase from last year’s total.

That’s the latest calculation from Gartner, which also expects the number of mobile payment users to reach 212.2 million in 2012, up from 160.5 million last year.

BT says it’s on track to have 500,000 WiFi hotspots working across London in time for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, including exclusive WiFi service across the Olympic Park in East London. The figure is a combination of commercial-standard hotspots plus thousands of independent businesses and homes that have joined the BT FON community.

Nine Olympic venues including the Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and all public areas of the Olympic Park will be served by a new network of nearly 1,000 WiFi access points.