Mark Bridge writes:

Happy New Year and welcome back to our weekly news summary (which is also available by email if you register online). Thanks to the Bank Holiday last Monday we’ve had a relatively gentle start to the year, although I’m sure this week’s CES show in Las Vegas will generate plenty of product news.

One person who’s had a dramatic start to 2012 is Scott Thompson, who is leaving PayPal to join Yahoo! as its new CEO. He’s taking over from interim CEO Tim Morse, who returns to his role as Chief Financial Officer. Mr Morse, as I’m sure you’ll remember, replaced Carol Bartz in October 2011.

There’s also big (or biggish) news from Nokia. It’s acquired Norwegian mobile software company Smarterphone, which gives it control of yet another mobile operating system. The deal actually took place in November but has only just been announced.

Here in the UK, Everything Everywhere has said it’ll be hosting China Telecom’s new virtual network. This is something of a milestone, as it’s believed to be the first time a Chinese telecom operator has launched its own virtual network outside China.

Meanwhile, O2 is busy creating Europe’s biggest free WiFi zone. When completed, it’ll cover the Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea areas of London - and should at least partially be in place for the Olympics.

And there was a rap on the knuckles for the EM Radiation Research Trust, who’d warned men not to keep their mobile phones in their trouser pockets. The ASA said these ads were likely to cause unjustifiable distress... particularly given their placement in gents’ toilets.

In addition to all this, we’ve started the year with a fair few research reports. Mobile video usage is expected to increase eight-fold during the next five years, we’ve learned that 1% of mobile users consume 50% of all mobile data, mobile coupon redemption rates are expected to be 8 times better than paper coupons, iPad users are believed to have downloaded three billion applications since the tablet was launched - and more than half of all handsets shipped worldwide in the next 12 months are expected to be 3G or 4G mobile phones.

All pretty upbeat, I’d say. Looks like 2012 is going to be fun!