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?

ABI Research says the number of smartphone applications downloaded from 'app stores' will keep growing until 2013… but those figures will then start to drop.

Last year, consumers downloaded 2.4 billion applications from application stores – a figure that'll almost treble by 2013, when almost 7 billion apps will be downloaded. Apple's App Store will remain the market leader until 2013 according to ABI's report, despite pressure from Android and Symbian. However, ABI Research says the evolution of the mobile internet will then lead to consumers starting to head away from dedicated stores for their software applications. Total app downloads will probably continue to grow, although downloads via app stores are expected to fall.

In the latest edition of The Fonecast we spoke to Richard Kinder, Vice President of Technology and New Business at Red Bend Software. The company specialises in Mobile Software Management, which is probably best known as a service that enables over-the-air (OTA) updates for mobile phones. Here’s an edited transcript of the interview, which started when we asked Richard for a simple explanation of what MSM and OTA meant.

"Red Bend software has been around for a number of years, and our solutions in the Mobile Software Management space allow the software in a mobile phone to be updated in the consumer’s hands."

Application development on the Symbian platform is now "as easy as creating a web page", according to the open-source Symbian Foundation. It's just launched a set of app development tools that let web developers use their existing HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills in a mobile context.