UK telecoms regulator Ofcom wants to ban inflation-related rises in phone and broadband contracts. Instead, it says any potential mid-contract price rises should be set out in pounds and pence.

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.

Mark Bridge writes:

There’s plenty of snow disrupting the UK – but, thanks to the mobile telecoms industry, thousands upon thousands of people are able to work from home. We’re all feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now, aren’t we?

Pedestrians may have been skating down pavements but a different kind of trouble on the high street dominated much of last week as music, DVD and occasional mobile phone retailer HMV went into administration.

Mark Bridge writes:

Smartphones and health are linked in many positive ways, from remote patient monitoring via a mobile network to applications that enhance medical education.

However, patients are being warned not to assume their smartphones are as smart as they might appear.

Iain Graham writes:

“I am late middle-aged (ok I’m 62), not an idiot!”

This is a phrase I seem to be using more and more frequently, either out loud to bright young things or silently to myself in utter frustration of modern ‘must have’ gadgets.

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.

Mark Bridge writes:

Happy New Year!  It’s been three weeks since our last newsletter and a fortnight since our podcast of mobile predictions for 2013, so there’s plenty to catch up with.

The new Microsoft Band, the Samsung Galaxy A smartphones and the Huawei Honor 6 are all discussed in this week's podcast.

We also look at some of the mobile industry's other big stories, including Amazon UK's mobile phone deals, the Lenovo purchase of Motorola Mobility, LG's quarterly results and the anticipated increase in WiFi hotspots.

This week's podcast begins with the latest news from Phones 4u, where hundreds of jobs have been saved but there are a large number of redundancies as well.

Iain, James and Mark then talk about new products from Amazon, BlackBerry and Panasonic, mobile payment innovation from Indonesia and the UK, the acquisition of IoT specialist Neul and Apple's updated privacy policy.

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge start this week's podcast by looking back at the launch of the iPhone 6, the Apple Watch and the Apple Pay service.

They then move on to discuss the troubles at Phones 4u, a UK smartphone launch from O2, another smartphone launch that's been put on hold, Microsoft's gaming plans - and more.

In this podcast Mark Bridge talks to Florent Stroppa from mobile value-added service specialist OnMobile about the state of the mobile industry in 2014.

They discuss the dominance of Apple and Samsung, network consolidation, the new Amazon Fire smartphone, smart wearables and much more.

This week's podcast covers the launch of the first Amazon smartphone and the introduction of Google Glass to the UK.

We also talk about new WiFi-powered voice services from EE and Three, plans to reduce mobile 'black spots', BlackBerry's app partnership, smartphone theft, 4G innovation... and rechargeable trousers.