Veteran smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry says it’s moving away from producing its own handsets and will instead license its software to other companies.

The first deal is with an Indonesian partner, BB Merah Putih, which is led by a leading telecommunications distributor in Indonesia.

BlackBerry is expanding its BBM Money mobile payment service to smartphones running Android and Apple iOS from early 2015.

It was launched in Indonesia last year, enabling customers to make real-time payments to any BBM contacts who have signed up to the service.

Slightly later than originally anticipated, BlackBerry has formally launched its BlackBerry Z3 Jakarta Edition smartphone.

It’ll go on sale from Thursday this week at an official price of IDR 2,199,000. (£114).

BlackBerry has revealed details of two new smartphones during Mobile World Congress 2014 this week.

The forthcoming BlackBerry Q20, which is due to become available during the second half of this year, will offer a QWERTY keyboard as well as physical buttons for ‘menu’, ‘back’, ‘send’ and ‘end’. There’ll be a trackpad for navigation as well as a 3.5-inch touchscreen.

Indonesian financial institution PermataBank has joined forces with BlackBerry and mobile money specialist Monitise to launch BBM Money.

This pilot scheme will let customers set up a mobile money account from their BlackBerry smartphone and make real-time payments to any BBM contacts who have also signed up to the service.

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?

This week the team review a new phone from Sagem, a bluetooth headset that cancels out background noise from Qstik, the introduction of .mobi domains and the latest games to keep you entertained.

This week the team explore the real cost of Mobile Internet, review the latest Blackberry with a camera, the O2 Ice, and Lego meets Star Wars in the latest mobile game.

This week the team discuss mobile pricing, review the LG KG810 and MDA Vario 2 from T-Mobile along with Rogue Trader the latest game from RockPool as well as a joke management system called Pass-It-On-Jokes.

This week we review the Sony Mylo, a phone that may rival the Blackberry in the form of the E61 from Nokia, Insaniquarium the latest game to make the leap from web to mobile and the LG U400 phone for DJs.

After the summer break the Fonecast team is back with a review of 2 new mobiles from Motorola, a stylish new phone from BenQ-Siemens, advice on protecting your voice mail plus all the mobile news from the last month.