Mark Bridge writes:

Patents were a very popular topic of conversation last week. Google sold its Motorola Mobility smartphone business to Lenovo but hung on to most of the patents. Does this mean the patents were the most valuable part of the business? Well, when you look at the difference between the original purchase price and the sale price, it seems a reasonable conclusion.

Inq Mobile, a Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary that launched in 2007 as a mobile phone manufacturer and produced one of the first so-called ‘Facebook phones’ before changing its focus to mobile software, has closed down.

Last year it produced a personalised magazine application called Material and a ‘social homescreen’ app called SO.HO.

Mark Bridge writes:

As the final days before this year’s Mobile World Congress approach, we discover there are two types of scheduled news announcements from the wireless telecoms industry.

There are the announcements delayed until MWC begins because the company wants to be part of the buzz at Barcelona. And there are the announcements made in the fortnight beforehand because they don’t want their story to get lost.

Inq, the Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary that started life five years ago as a mobile phone manufacturer before changing its focus to mobile software, has released the beta version of its new Material application.

Material is described as a ‘content discovery service’ that creates a twice-daily electronic magazine from information from the user’s Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Frank Meehan is stepping down from his role as CEO of Hutchison Whampoa-owned INQ Mobile.

He’ll now be working with other technology businesses owned by Li Ka-shing, the chairman of Hutchison Whampoa. Mr Meehan is on the board of Spotify, TOM, TOUT and Trapit.

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?

We're celebrating the seventh anniversary of The Fonecast this month with a handful of our favourite interviews from the early years.

You'll hear Ben Whitaker from Masabi, Truphone co-founder James Tagg, former Olympic athlete Steve Backley OBE and online banking pioneer Steve Townend.

This week's podcast begins with a report about a delay - or perhaps even cancellation - for the UK launch of HTC's Facebook phone, the HTC First.

We then move on to Vodafone's results, an Android app scare for Sky, Samsung's successes, contactless payments, potentially life-saving QR codes and an uncomfortable story about a smuggled mobile phone.

We start this week's podcast by talking about Yahoo and Tumblr before moving on to discuss Google's recent developer conference.

There are product announcements from BlackBerry, HP and the former MeeGo developers at Jolla... and there's some interesting mobile app news as well.

Three new smartphones launched at three separate events. Yes, Nokia has definitely been busy in the past few days.

As well as talking about Finland's finest phones, we also discuss recent claims made about EE, annual results from Sony, smart metering, 5G technology, virus protection, Vodafone and the worldwide growth of mobile phones.

We start today's programme with the promise of a faster roll-out for the UK's mobile broadband services.

Next on the agenda is tablet sales... followed by mobile security, mobile boarding passes, quarterly results, acquisitions, advertising and management succession.