Portio Research, which specialises in analysing the mobile and wireless industries, has forecast there’ll be 6.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by the end of 2012.

By the end of 2016 it expects the total to have reached almost 8.5 billion, which represents a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 7.3% between the end of 2011 and 2016.

Technology company Huawei has published financial results for the first half of 2012.

Sales revenue was up 5.1% year-on-year to CNY 102.7 billion (£10.38 billion), while operating profit reached CNY 8.79 billion. That’s a 22% drop from the same period in 2011 but an increase from the previous six months.

HTC Corporation has celebrated its 15th anniversary today with the official opening of its new global headquarters in Taipei.

The ceremony was hosted by Cher Wang, HTC’s chair, along with Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou. Wu Den-yih, Vice President of the Republic of China, was among those attending.

Earlier this year we reported that China Telecom’s European subsidiary planned to launch an MVNO on the Everything Everywhere network, targeting Chinese residents and businesses in the UK.

The deal would be the first MVNO outside China launched by a Chinese telecom operator. 

The network, which is called CTExcelbiz, is being officially launched today in London. It’s a ‘pay as you go’ service and will will offer Chinese language voicemail services along with bilingual Chinese/English customer service. Calls between CTExcelbiz users will be free.

A new research report from Berg Insight estimates that 108 million mobile network connections were being used for machine-to-machine communication at the end of 2011, a 37% increase on the previous year.

Asia-Pacific was the strongest regional market, with a year-on-year growth rate of 64%, while Europe saw annual growth of around 27% to 32.3 million connections.

Mark Windle, head of marketing at OpenCloud, predicts that this year’s reduction in the number of traditional telecoms operators in some countries will provide an opportunity for other operators to innovate and capture market share in 2016.

He says next year will be a year of rapid change for telecoms… whether it’s MVNO disruption, competitive tariff pricing or simply defence from the ‘dark art’ of hacking.

Mark Bridge writes:

The most memorable moments in life often go unrecorded. You don't have your camera in your hands. Your finger is still hovering over the 'pause' button on your audio recorder. Or you were simply too busy experiencing whatever was happening. It's all about the one that got away.

That's where Kapture can help.

Mark Bridge writes:

James Rosewell shows me a colourful roll of paper that's the width of an iPhone but well over three metres long. When I look closer, I can see it's a printed copy of the Wall Street Journal's mobile website. That's a lot of scrolling to do... and a pretty unfriendly user experience for anyone reading the news online. Why does it work so badly?

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.