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?

Mobile navigation developer ALK Technologies, the company behind CoPilot Live mobile navigation apps, says 82% of its users are unlikely to purchase a dedicated sat nav device in the future.

This news reinforces recent reports that suggest smartphones are continuing to threaten the in-car dominance of dedicated satellite navigation hardware.

Opera Software has calculated that 105 million people use one of its browsers on their mobile phones every month.

The company's latest 'State of the Mobile Web' report reveals that 90.4 million people now use Opera Mini every month and approximately 15 million people use Opera Mobile each month.

INQ Mobile, which has Hutchison Whampoa as its parent company, says it plans to have two Android-powered ‘Facebook phones’ on the market later this year.

The INQ Cloud Touch is an Android 2.2 device running a 600MHz Qualcomm chip and a 3.5-inch HGVA screen, while the INQ Cloud Q has a 2.6-inch screen and a QWERTY keyboard. The phones are the first mobiles to use the Facebook social graph API.

UK company ClearCaller has launched an innovative Caller ID service for mobile phone users with a visual impairment. The service is called C-CallerID and it’s been announced with a half-price offer that’ll be available from 21st February.

C-CallerID generates a full-screen image of one or two initial letters from the mobile phone’s contact list.

The Wholesale Applications Community has announced 10 new members, bringing its membership to 68 companies.

Adobe, Amdocs, Eyeline, HP, IBM, Minigate, Neustar, Panasonic, SAP and SanDisk have all recently joined.