The European Commission has opened three investigations to examine whether tax authorities have made appropriate decisions about corporate tax paid by Apple in Ireland, Starbucks in the Netherlands and Fiat Finance and Trade in Luxembourg.

It’s launched the investigation following media reports that suggest that some companies have received significant tax reductions through ‘tax rulings’ issued by national tax authorities.

A new research report from Berg Insight shows that in-store mobile wallet payments across Europe are expected to grow from less than €100 million (£85 million) in 2012 to €45 billion (£38 billion) in 2017, which is a compound annual growth rate of 275%.

This will give mobile wallets 1.6% of all European credit card and debit card payments in 2017.

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.

Coffee chain Starbucks has partnered with mobile payment company Square to introduce the ‘Pay with Square’ app at around 7.000 US Starbucks stores. In addition, Square will process Starbucks’ US credit and debit card transactions.

Starbucks is investing $25 million in Square with its chairman, Howard Schultz, joining Square’s Board of Directors.

Earlier this year Starbucks introduced its iPhone mobile payment app to the UK - and the coffee company has now added an Android app as well.

The new Android app, which is also launching in Canada, enables customers to pay via a Starbucks Card account using an on-screen barcode. It’s also possible to manage a card account, check loyalty rewards and find local stores.

Mark Bridge writes:

“Take some responsibility for your own actions”. There’s probably not a parent in the world who hasn’t said or thought something similar. But that’s not the message coming from regulators in the USA.

We’ve laughed in the past about coffee cups from the United States that warn about the coffee they contain. Now there seems to be a similar movement against mobile phones that connect to the internet.

This is a guest post from BusinessInsider.com written by Gregor Schauer, who has worked in tech in Silicon Valley since 2000. Gregor has also recently spent two years in equity research at JMP Securities and Jefferies, covering the internet sector and enterprise software.

Anthony Keyworth, Orange UK’s Director of Product Marketing, has been gazing into his crystal ball to predict which business-focussed mobile applications could change the ways we work in the next five years.

His top four future developments, published under the heading “The next frontier for mobile business applications”, are:

Mark Bridge writes:

No-one really likes an anticlimax. That was my biggest complaint about the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. Plenty of potential, a nice new interface – but nothing much that wasn’t being done elsewhere.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s not just me, is it?  The mobile industry really has gone a bit litigation crazy.

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.