We start this week with a look at troubled UK retailer HMV before moving on to research that sheds new light on mobile data usage.

You'll also find a new mapping app, increasing free WiFi coverage, a phone service designed for children and preliminary quarterly results from Samsung and Nokia.

Mark Bridge writes:

Oh, how the mobile industry loves a superlative. Much like the work ethic celebrated by Daft Punk (or Kanye West, if you prefer), it’s always looking for a new angle.

NTT Docomo says it’s working on a mobile phone that’s aimed specifically at pre-teen children and teenagers who are upper elementary and junior high school students in Japan.

The Smartphone for Juniors SH-05E is being manufactured by Sharp and will go on sale in early February.

Seven major mobile network operators - KPN, NTT DOCOMO, Rogers, SingTel, Telefónica, Telstra and Vimpelcom - have formed an alliance that’ll see them working together on machine-to-machine (M2M) projects.

The initiative is also open to other operators.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s time for my summary of last week’s mobile industry news… and what a week it’s been. Not just for me – I made my first-ever visit to Over The Air on Friday – but for the world of mobile devices.

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 week's edition of The Fonecast starts with news that Motorola Mobility is to lose around a fifth of its staff worldwide. There's also more reorganisation at Nokia, which is passing its Qt software business to Digia.

In addition we're talking about a new US partnership between Starbucks and Square, some good news for Research In Motion, a worrying report for Samsung and a major milestone for Shazam.

We start this week's edition of The Fonecast with a new product from RIM: the mobile-enabled BlackBerry PlayBook. Next comes Vodafone's move to Tech City and Google moving its mobile wallet into the cloud.

You'll also find the latest batch of quarterly results, some mobile data research and a story about sheep sending SMS text messages.

There are plenty of quarterly results to report in this week's edition of The Fonecast, including Samsung, Apple, Telefonica and Facebook. In addition, we have new research that shows how smartphone sales are racing ahead as feature phone sales slow down.

There's also news about mobile coverage in the Channel Tunnel, mobile application downloads and m-commerce.

In today's podcast we're talking to Doug Suriano, Chief Technology Officer at mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec, about net neutrality.

Net neutrality is the principle that consumers are not restricted in the ways they're able to use their internet connection. The topic is often in the headlines, either because some governments may want to prevent their citizens from viewing certain types of information - or because of commercial restrictions.

We start this week's podcast with two news stories from Ofcom. Not only has the regulator announced its plans for the UK's 4G spectrum auction, it's also released research that shows we're texting more than we talk.

There's a look at the changing relationship between HTC and Beats Electronics, O2's apology for the network outage earlier this month and the Wholesale Applications Community's integration into the GSMA.