Mark Bridge writes:

It was a week of dramatic contrasts in the mobile phone industry. We started with Everything Everywhere’s news that 4G service was coming to the UK this year – possibly with a new brand that’ll work alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Meanwhile Three UK seems to have its own plans that involve acquiring some excess 4G spectrum from Everything Everywhere. There was much muttering from Vodafone and O2, although whether this’ll manifest itself as legal action remains to be seen.

Mobile and social gaming company PopCap, which joined EA last year, has warned that around 50 US-based employees will lose their jobs as the result of a reorganisation.

An ‘exploratory consultation’ is also evaluating the future of the company’s Dublin office.

PopCap Games has signed an agreement to pre-load a number of its games on Sony Ericsson Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro smartphones, marking the 'official' arrival of PopCap games on Android devices in Europe.

The deal will roll out later this summer, with the full version of Chuzzle being pre-installed along with unlimited trial versions of other games, such as Peggle and Plants vs Zombies.

Electronic Arts (EA) has announced an agreement to acquire PopCap Games, a US-based company that produces games for mobile phones, tablets, PCs and social network sites.

PopCap has produced a number of popular titles including Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled and Zuma.

New figures from PopCap Games have shown large increases in the usage and frequency of mobile game playing among US and UK adults.

33.6% of all adults in the USA and the United Kingdom say they've played a game on their mobile phone handset in the past month, with almost a quarter (24.6%) having played in the past week. The figure was much higher for smartphone users; 83% of them had played in the past week.