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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

UK 4G this year and more 4G next year

Podcast - 9th October 2012

Ofcom, the UK government and the major networks have all agreed a timetable for 4G to be launched across the UK.

We're talking about those plans in this week's podcast - and taking a look at all the other top mobile industry stories as well, from US mergers and leaky tablets to free WiFi and forthcoming quarterly results.

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Apple apologises, RIM shows off and Vodafone gets friendlier with O2

Podcast - 3rd October 2012

In this week's podcast we're talking about Apple's apology for its Maps app, we're looking at RIM's BlackBerry 10 news and we're discussing the new UK company formed by Vodafone and O2.

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The iPhone 5 goes on sale, new HTC phones appear... and much more

Podcast - 26th September 2012

We start this week's programme by talking about the iPhone 5 and iOS6 before moving on to HTC's forthcoming Windows Phone 8 devices.

There's also some mobile payment news, online shopping research, a health study, data about tablet manufacturing and machine-to-machine connection figures.

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Mobile gaming, from mobile game development to future trends

We talk to Sandy Duncan of YoYo Games

In this special podcast feature we’re looking inside the world of mobile gaming - from the commercial concerns of game development to the current trends affecting mobile game design.

Our guide is Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games.

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The new iPhone, the billionth Android device and the cancelled smartphone

Podcast - 19th September 2012

Although last week's Apple iPhone 5 announcement dominated the headlines, there's still plenty more to talk about.

We have a prediction about the billionth Android handset, we look at Acer's cancelled smartphone launch and we discuss the growth of mobile messaging.

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