With the end of the year just a couple of weeks away, The Fonecast invites London-based dealer Faisal Sheikh and mobile recruitment expert Spencer Davies to discuss the past 12 months... and the potential for 2011. Plus, as usual, the team looks at mobile news headlines from the last seven days.

The Fonecast takes its weekly look at the latest mobile news headlines, while Chris Caudle from the IMPDA talks about the falling number of UK mobile phone dealers.

We bid farewell to 2008 in this week's edition of The Fonecast. As well as our usual look at the latest mobile news we also predict what'll be hitting the headlines in 2009... and we revisit our predictions from 12 months ago.

This week Iain Graham from The Fonecast talks to Faisal Sheikh of 'Fone Doctors' about the current state of retailing. There's a preview of the Sony Ericsson W705 Walkman and the team's usual off-beat look at industry headlines from the last seven days.

As well as its usual look at the latest mobile industy headlines, this week The Fonecast talks to an O2 dealer and the IMPDA's Chris Caudle about the changes to O2's dealer commission structure.

Anton Faulconbridge writes:

It’s the latest tech update that everyone is talking about; for good or for bad, iOS7 is here and it’s something that all mobile app developers need to take into consideration. So, how have these changes to Apple’s system had an impact on third party apps?

David Heled writes:

The dependency on mobile phones is at an all-time high. Used for everything from the weekly grocery shop to monitoring heart rate, it’s no underestimation to say that we would be lost without our mobile phones. So when it takes days for your phone to be repaired, it has a considerable impact on your normal daily life.

Mark Bridge writes:

Ring-back tones offer consumers yet another way to customise their mobile phone service. Yet despite this – and the revenue opportunities they provide – many mobile network operators don’t offer them.

Recently I spoke to Florent Stroppa, General Manager Europe for value-added service specialist OnMobile, to find out why the UK doesn’t really seem to be bothered about ring-back tones… and whether the next-generation of ring-back services will change this.

Mark Bridge writes:

Talk about a difference. In preliminary results last week, HTC announced its first-ever quarterly loss while Samsung revealed record quarterly profits.

Curiously, many of the week’s other news stories also had a companion headline to provide a contrast.

Mark Bridge writes:

Things didn’t look so bad in the mobile industry last week. After the shock of BlackBerry’s job losses and restructuring, it seemed as though the saga could be reaching a conclusion. On Monday shareholder Fairfax Financial announced a bid to buy the company. BlackBerry’s board of directors has approved the terms of the agreement, although it’s still able to consider alternative proposals as well.

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.