2 UK has extended its partnership with the Rugby Football Union for four more years. It’s been sponsoring the RFU and England Rugby since the game turned professional in 1995.

As part of the new agreement, O2 will extend its Priority service to give customers priority access to tickets for England matches at Twickenham stadium.

Mark Bridge writes:

Facebook’s certainly had its share of privacy concerns – but last week the social network revealed plans to go public in a very different way. It formally announced its intention to launch on the stock market; what is known in the USA as an Initial Public Offering. The IPO is expected to raise around $5 billion, although that’ll just be a fraction of the total (and as yet undisclosed) value of the company.

Sony Ericsson has expanded its existing relationship with surf-inspired brand Billabong to create an Xperia active Billabong Edition smartphone.

The original version of the scratch-resistant handset was announced in June 2011. It’s dustproof and water resistant to the IP67 rating.

Research company Canalys has released its estimates of smartphone shipments for 2011, noting that annual global shipments of smartphones exceeded those of client PCs - desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks and tablets - for the first time.

Total worldwide smartphone shipments increased 63% year-on-year to 487.7 million units, it calculated, while the number of client PCs shipped globally grew by 15% to 414.6 million units.

Google has revealed details of a behind-the-scenes security service called ‘Bouncer’.

It automatically scans applications in the Android Market to identify whether they are likely to behave maliciously when installed on a user’s smartphone.