Mark Bridge writes:

It was a week of dramatic contrasts in the mobile phone industry. We started with Everything Everywhere’s news that 4G service was coming to the UK this year – possibly with a new brand that’ll work alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Meanwhile Three UK seems to have its own plans that involve acquiring some excess 4G spectrum from Everything Everywhere. There was much muttering from Vodafone and O2, although whether this’ll manifest itself as legal action remains to be seen.

Mobile and social gaming company PopCap, which joined EA last year, has warned that around 50 US-based employees will lose their jobs as the result of a reorganisation.

An ‘exploratory consultation’ is also evaluating the future of the company’s Dublin office.

PopCap Games has signed an agreement to pre-load a number of its games on Sony Ericsson Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro smartphones, marking the 'official' arrival of PopCap games on Android devices in Europe.

The deal will roll out later this summer, with the full version of Chuzzle being pre-installed along with unlimited trial versions of other games, such as Peggle and Plants vs Zombies.

Electronic Arts (EA) has announced an agreement to acquire PopCap Games, a US-based company that produces games for mobile phones, tablets, PCs and social network sites.

PopCap has produced a number of popular titles including Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled and Zuma.

New figures from PopCap Games have shown large increases in the usage and frequency of mobile game playing among US and UK adults.

33.6% of all adults in the USA and the United Kingdom say they've played a game on their mobile phone handset in the past month, with almost a quarter (24.6%) having played in the past week. The figure was much higher for smartphone users; 83% of them had played in the past week.

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?

The team take a good look at the N95 8GB from Nokia, speak to Stephen Spillett about his plans for Mainline, and bring you all the news and rumours from the past 7 days.

To start the New Year the team look back on 2007, review the Motorola W377 and bring you all the festive seasons rumours and news.

This week the team takes its regular look at mobile news headlines from the last week. We revisit our predictions from 2006, make new predictions for 2008 and also review the music-playing Samsung F210.

Iain, Mark and James take a good look at the mobile industry's news headlines from the last week. There's also an interview with Nokia's Tom Erskine about the new "Nokia Comes With Music" service and a review of the Giorgio Armani–Samsung luxury mobile phone.

This week 'The Fonecast' takes its regular look at mobile industry headlines from the last 7 days. We also interview Mary-Carol Harris about the O2 Wallet project and review the new Nokia N82.