UK communications regulator Ofcom has published a report looking at the use of online communication services. The report reveals that WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app among UK adults, with 76% of respondents having used it in the past three months.

Wireless communications trade organisation CTIA-The Wireless Association has found that mobile data usage exceeded 1.1 trillion MB from July 2011 to June 2012, a 104% increase from the previous 12 months.

There are now 321.7 million mobile connections in the USA, the equivalent of 101% mobile penetration.

Juniper Research has forecast that the amount of mobile messaging traffic worldwide will reach 28.2 trillion messages per year by 2017, nearly double the 14.7 trillion messages expected to be sent this year.

It says most of this growth will come from instant messaging (IM), which will account for over a quarter of all mobile messages in five years’ time.

Mark Bridge writes:

A couple of research reports this week have noted that text messaging and picture messaging growth is slowing down. Could this be the end for our trusty friend SMS and its bolder, brighter (and slightly flakier) sibling MMS?

HP, Facebook and Twitter are all up for discussion in The Fonecast this week, along with customer service complaints, mobile security failings and children with iPhones.

By incorporating advanced algorithms and machine learning capabilities, AI can help to optimize a smartphone's performance, providing users with a faster, more efficient and user-friendly experience.

Mark Bridge writes:

I've been taking a look back at the devices I've written about during the past few years. Some are still faithful companions, others... well, let's just say my faith was misplaced.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.