We start this week's podcast with news that thousands of Microsoft's ex-Nokia employees are losing their jobs.

Other topics for discussion include the new Apple and IBM partnership, Yahoo's acquisition of Flurry, regulating mobile games, improving rural mobile coverage, BT's new phone service and some management movements.

Apple and IBM have announced an exclusive partnership that’ll see IBM creating business-focussed applications for iPhone and iPad devices.

As part of the deal, IBM will also sell iPhones and iPads to its business clients with its apps already installed.

Jürgen Hase of Deutsche Telekom writes:

The Smart City is on its way. All over the world more and more cities are connecting all areas of their infrastructure. Pisa in Tuscany, for example, aims to improve its traffic management with a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution and a Big Data service provided by Deutsche Telekom.

Mark Bridge writes:

I was ready to poke fun at IBM for its sponsored graffiti wall at Mobile World Congress this year. Graffiti and IBM don't have a comfortable history, as anyone who remembers the Linux campaign from 2001 will tell you.

Mark Bridge writes:

In a way, it’s hard to believe that the first Apple iPhone wasn’t seen in public until this day seven years ago. It - and the trend towards one-piece smartphones with hardly any buttons - seems to have been with us for much longer.

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 is part 2 of Mobile, Maps & Geolocation - so much more than "Where am I?"

It's a Mobile Monday London panel discussion with Gary Gale, Christopher Osborne, Jeni Tennison, Ian Holt and Harry Wood. Part 1 is available as a separate podcast.

This week's Mobile Monday London event featured a panel discussion about the opportunities for mobile-based geolocation and mapping. The event was supported by UK mapping agency Ordnance Survey.

In this podcast you'll hear the first part of the evening's discussion plus interviews with Nokia's Gary Gale, who chaired the panel, and Ian Holt from Ordnance Survey. Part 2 is available as a separate podcast.

This week's podcast starts with the world's slimmest smartphone (at least for the moment) before introducing a new smartphone company and even more new products from Samsung.

We're also talking about the battle of Instagram vs Vine, the sale of O2 Ireland, mobile retail web usage, the new CEO of BT and a new report about an unexpected health threat to mobile phone users.

Samsung has put a 10x optical zoom lens on a smartphone, Google is acquiring navigation app Waze and the European Commission is getting ready to equip cars with an emergency call system.

We're also talking about a strike threat at O2, the risk of 'showrooming' to high-street retailers, the end of Symbian smartphones and plenty more as well.

We start this week's podcast with Apple's announcement about the new version of its iOS platform - and follow this with a look at the privacy concerns surrounding the US government's PRISM operation.

Next come Samsung's new phones, Ericsson's new contract, a potential end to European roaming charges, some sophisticated mobile malware and plenty of other news stories as well.