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Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

UK service providers must notify customers when they connect to a different network

New rules from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom will protect customers when they use their mobile phone on a foreign network. In addition, customers will be alerted if they are inadvertently roaming, perhaps because they're near an international border.
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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

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 30th January 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want a big money story from the last few days, you want Apple. The company announced its highest quarterly revenue ever, hitting $46.33 billion (£29.66 billion) with record quarterly profits of $13.06 billion. That’s probably enough money to buy the moon, assuming Newt Gingrich is prepared to sell it – or, in the real world, is one of the biggest quarterly profits ever.

Therefore it’s probably no surprise to hear that Apple overtook Samsung for smartphone shipments in the final quarter of 2011, although Samsung was the top smartphone producer across the year. Apple did well for tablet sales, too.

And it’s also not surprising to hear that the Apple iPhone was the device that Good Technology was most frequently connecting to corporate networks in Q4 2011.

Bucking the trend was 51Degrees.mobi, which published a white paper showing how the proportion of Apple devices browsing the mobile web was falling. You can listen to our podcast with 51Degrees.mobi CEO James Rosewell to learn more.

Anyway, let’s move on – albeit temporarily – for Apple was not the only company with financial results. Samsung had a record year in 2011, with revenue reaching an all-time high of 165 trillion won (around £94 billion) although net income and operating profit were down. Motorola Mobility recorded an operating loss of $285 million for 2011, while a drop in Nokia sales resulted in 2010’s operating profit of €2.1 billion turning into a loss of €1.1 billion for last year.

To legal action now, and we’re back with Apple.

An appeal court in the Netherlands has dismissed Apple’s claim that Samsung tablet devices should be banned because of their design. However, things haven’t all gone Samsung’s way – it’s just had a patent claim against Apple dismissed in Germany. Intel has agreed to acquire video software and patents from RealNetworks, Motorola Mobility is making a patent claim against the Apple iPhone 4S – and Ericsson has signed a cross-licensing patent agreement with ZTE.

Talking of licensing, HP has come up with a timetable for making its webOS source code available under an open source licence. It’s started by releasing version 2.0 of the Enyo developer tool for webOS and says the whole thing will be open source by September 2012.

O2 had something of a problem last week with information being more open that it intended. It was discovered that O2 had been including each customer’s mobile phone number in the browser code submitted when that customer visited a website. It blamed a technical error, saying the information should only have been available to trusted partners, and sorted things out pretty quickly... just leaving the unanswered questions of exactly who a ‘trusted partner’ is and whether this mistake had resulted in any real-world problems.

Finally, let’s not forget Thorsten Heins, the new President and CEO of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. He’s now in the double-width hot seat after co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie stepped down. He started the week by saying that RIM didn’t need any drastic change - but by the end of the week was talking about the company making significant plans. The difference, he explained, is there’ll be no break-up or sale. I’m glad the confusion’s all cleared up now.

Start your week with a reminder of the latest mobile headlines. Simply register at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page and we’ll send you this weekly news summary by email.

The Fonecast is sponsored by 51Degrees.mobi. You’ll find more about advertising and sponsorship opportunities on the ‘About us’ section of our website.
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Recent Podcasts

Operating Systems: a new set of Davids emerge to challenge the incumbent Goliaths

Podcast - 22nd July 2013

This panel discussion about new mobile operating systems was recorded at Mobile Monday London on 15th July 2013.

It's chaired by Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight with contributions from the GSMA's Alex Sinclair, David Wood of Delta Wisdom (and formerly of Symbian), Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile, Victor Palau of Canonical and Christian Heilmann from Mozilla Corporation.

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Nokia, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Telefonica and much more... all in this week's podcast

Podcast - 17th July 2013

There's big news from big names this week as Nokia announces a new smartphone, Microsoft announces a new structure and Research In Motion announces a new name.

We also talk about O2 UK's backhaul deal, Apple's eBook court case, a complaint about advertising and plenty more as well.

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A security scare, a new mobile payment service, some quarterly results and loads of money

Podcast - 10th July 2013

We start this week's podcast by talking about an Android security risk - before moving on to new 4G services from EE, a drop in Nook tablet prices and a couple of quarterly results that disappointed the stock market.

In addition we discuss insurance complaints, Bluetooth Smart technology, a new multi-million investment in Shazam and some research about the future of apps.

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Will mobile data kill SMS, does all-IP mean less security - and what's the future for mobile networks?

Podcast - 5th July 2013

Robin Kent, operations director at Adax Europe, talks to Mark Bridge about some of the challenges facing mobile network operators as data usage increases.

They discuss how networks can differentiate their services, how can they monetise the app phenomenon, whether mobile data will kill voice and SMS... and the privacy concerns that arise around all-IP communication.

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New mobile products from Sony, Firefox and Sainsbury's

Podcast - 3rd July 2013

In our podcast this week we're discussing the new SmartWatch from Sony, talking about Firefox OS smartphones and contemplating Vodafone's partnership with Sainsbury's.

We're also looking at complaint figures, roaming charges, pay as you go pricing, joint ventures, BlackBerry's recent results and the future of Windows Phone.

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