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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Mark Bridge writes:

They were a proud race. Proud of their individuality. Proud of the simple yet high-tech environment they inhabited.

But their population wasn’t growing as quickly as it had. They weren’t dying out – far from it, because they were committed to the cause – but there weren’t as many bright new faces as there’d been before. And now the Others were moving closer.

Yes, they’d done their best to resist the Others. They’d tried moving into new areas; not running away but expanding. It seemed to work. A new generation – a new race, some said – had been born. Different, yet the same. So why did they still feel as though the Others were getting dangerously close?

That’s not the opening of the worst science-fiction novel of all time. It’s the place where some people think Apple finds itself at the moment.

Last year, around 2.6 billion applications were downloaded from 'app stores' to consumer mobile phones. In 2015, that figure is expected to be 25 billion.

It's the latest calculation from Juniper Research, which also notes that 'freemium' – free to download but with chargeable options later - is becoming the most popular business model for apps.

The independent non-profit Symbian Developer Cooperative has launched today and immediately became a member of the Symbian Foundation. The new organisation is open to all individuals; participation is free of charge.

Anyone who joins Symbian DevCo as an 'associate' has the opportunity to stand for election to the Symbian Councils; this type of opportunity was previously only available to employees of member companies.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system is now being released as a 'technical preview' to thousands of mobile developers. Until now, the software has only been tested within Microsoft.

Prototype phones from Asus, LG and Samsung are being sent to Microsoft developer partners, following the beta release of Windows Phone developer tools a week ago.

Apple held a press conference yesterday evening in an attempt to draw a line under recent 'antennagate' complaints. The new iPhone 4 has been criticised for a dramatic drop in signal strength when it's held in a certain way; a problem the company says is a combination of software fault – signal strength wasn't being displayed accurately – and a hardware design issue that affects all mobile phones.