Mark Bridge writes:

Season of goodwill?  Not in the mobile phone industry.

Orange UK is putting its prices up next month. It says the 4.34% rise is less than inflation, so you might think customers would be pleased. You’d be wrong. Also unhappy are many people who’ve discovered Carrier IQ software embedded on their phones. Fortunately for the UK mobile industry, most of those people seem to be in the United States. And there was unhappiness in Egypt as Twitter’s acquisition of privacy and security company Whisper Systems saw Whisper’s mobile encryption applications taken (temporarily) offline.

There’s been a lot press interest in the recent decision by Orange UK to increase its ‘pay monthly’ price plan charges by 4.34% from 8th January 2012.

The company says ‘out of plan’ charges - additional calls, text messages and data - will not be changing.

Yahoo! has added a new mobile communications product to its portfolio.

It’s called Hub and is available as a beta Android app to users with a US-based SIM card. Plans for availability outside the USA haven’t been confirmed.

The new Telefónica Digital business unit has reached an agreement with security technology company Giesecke & Devrient to establish a single European-wide platform for Near Field Communication services.

It means that G&D will take care of the ‘Trusted Service Manager’ technology and will also be one of the suppliers of NFC-enabled SIM cards.

The mobile hotspot router - produced by a number of manufacturers, including the Novatel and Huawei MiFi brands - is expected to sell 7.1 million units worldwide this year, according to ABI Research.

These devices, which can connect several WiFi-enabled devices to a single mobile broadband subscription, will be worth an estimated $1 billion in the shops.