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Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom wants to ban inflation-related rises in phone and broadband contracts. Instead, it says any potential mid-contract price rises should be set out in pounds and pence.
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Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.
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Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.
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UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.
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Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
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Opinion Articles

Monday, March 31, 2014

Last week at The Fonecast: 31st March 2014

HTC goes One better

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hey, everybody, we’re releasing a new flagship smartphone that carries all the hopes of the company with it. If this sells well, we could be saved. If not, it could be disaster.”

“Great. What shall we call our new phone?”

“Oh, we’ll give it the same name as the previous model. That’ll be fine.”

And so the HTC One (M8) arrived, edging the HTC One (M7) out of pole position.

But this wasn’t the week’s only new handset. EE turned up with a sub-£100 ‘pay as you go’ 4G smartphone (blessed with an animal name, rather like an Orange tariff), Danish company Lumigon presented the stylish T2 HD and TAG Heuer revealed a luxury phone with a hidden solar panel.

Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled its long-awaited ‘Office for iPad’ software and its gave other mobile productivity apps a tweak as well.

In the world of mergers and acquisitions, Nokia said its Microsoft deal was running slightly behind schedule but should be completed in April. Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail were unable to confirm whether or not they wanted to merge. Facebook agreed to acquire virtual reality company Oculus VR in a deal worth approximately £1.2 billion. And computing giant Intel acquired Basis Science, the company behind the Basis fitness band.

Finally, to a couple of transformations. BlackBerry, which is currently doing its best to pick itself up, dust itself off and start all over again, published results for the final quarter of its financial year. Around 3.4 million smartphones were sold to end users, of which only 1.1 million were running the BlackBerry 10 platform. On a positive note, the quarterly net loss wasn’t as bad as some had predicted.

Here in the UK, Ofcom published its latest quarterly batch of mobile network complaint statistics. Although O2 is still the company with the least complaints (and EE’s brands remain at the top of the complaints chart), Three has seen an impressive turn-around in the past few years. Complaints about the network have hit their lowest level since Ofcom began publishing complaint data. Nice work. Now, about that singing cat...

On Monday mornings we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in an email newsletter that’s very much like this article. To receive it, simply register your email address at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page. Alternatively, stay in touch by listening to our free podcasts via our website, by subscribing on iTunes, by using our RSS feed or by downloading the Stitcher.com mobile app.
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Recent Podcasts

The week's top mobile news stories: Vodafone expands, EE celebrates and Europe prepares

Podcast - 19th March 2014

We begin this week's programme by looking at Vodafone's acquisition plans in Spain before moving on to discuss universal mobile chargers and 4G roaming.

There's also time to talk about UK mobile coverage, EE's new customer tracking service, contactless transactions and a smartphone camera that can identify objects hidden behind something else.

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Johan Lodenius of MediaTek talks about wearable devices, smartphone evolution and the importance of driving costs down

Podcast - 13th March 2014

This year's Mobile World Congress was notable for the number of product launches by handset manufacturers. To get a better understanding of smartphone manufacturing, we spoke to Johan Lodenius of semiconductor company MediaTek.

He gave us a simple overview of how 'fabless' manufacturing works, discussed developments in smartphones and wearable devices, contemplated the end of the PC era and talked about the importance of driving costs down.

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Mobile payments, new smartphones, wearable devices, connected cars, CeBIT and David Cameron

Podcast - 12th March 2014

This week's programme opens with a quick look at David Cameron's commitment to 5G technology and the Internet of Things, which was made in a speech at CeBIT.

Iain and Mark then move on to talk about the other big mobile news headlines from the past few days, including the forthcoming Paym m-payment service, new HTC and LG smartphones, the growth of Chinese handset manufacturers, wearable devices, in-car connectivity and damaged iPhones.

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The rise of OTT messaging and the future of SMS: we talk to Stacy Adams of mBlox

Podcast - 7th March 2014

Messaging was very much on the agenda at Mobile World Congress this year, following Facebook's announcement that it was planning to acquire WhatsApp in a 19 billion dollar deal. So if the future for this type of internet-based 'over the top' messaging service looks good, what does this mean for SMS?

To find out more, we spoke to Stacy Adams of mBlox to learn what was happening in the messaging world, to find out how SMS is being integrated with mobile apps - and to discover some of the other ways SMS was being used by businesses today.

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We talk about 4G LTE coverage and device sensors with OpenSignal at Mobile World Congress

Podcast - 6th March 2014

Even at Mobile World Congress, the relevance of the mobile network operator can sometimes be forgotten. So for a different perspective on this year's event, we spoke to Samuel Johnston from British mobile crowd-sourcing firm OpenSignal.

Samuel discussed the announcements from MWC14 and OpenSignal's latest report into 4G LTE coverage around the world, as well as giving us an exclusive insight into OpenSignal's next research subject.

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