Samsung Electronics says it’s signed a ‘preferred partner’ agreement that’ll see Carphone Warehouse operating over 60 Samsung stand-alone stores across Europe.

It follows the opening of three Carphone Warehouse-run Samsung stores in Spain last year.

Mobile payment solution iZettle is being used by sellers of Sweden’s Situation Sthlm magazine to accept card payments.

The magazine, which has a similar business model to The Big Issue in the UK, is sold by people who are homeless.

Communications technology business Ericsson is planning to close its telecom cables operation within the company’s Networks business unit.

318 jobs in Sweden are expected to be lost.

Telecoms equipment specialist Ericsson has warned employees in its home country of Sweden that around 1,550 redundancies are planned across all job areas. The move is part of the company’s drive to reduce costs and improve operational effectiveness.

Over 17,700 people are currently employed in Ericsson’s Swedish sites.

Sony Mobile Communications AB says it’s relocating its corporate headquarters from the Swedish city of Lund to Tokyo in October this year; a decision that will see around 15% of staff - approximately 1,000 people - losing their jobs by the end of March 2014.

Lund will remain as a key Sony Mobile site with a new focus on software and application development.

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.