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.

From cooking pots to cars and aeroplanes, the products of the future will be increasingly intelligent - able to communicate and cooperate with humans, other devices and their environment. EU-funded research is assisting this smart products trend that promises to make everyday life easier, more comfortable and productive.

Anyone who has ever tried to install a new entertainment system in their home, fit a child seat in their car correctly or learn how to use a new hi-tech kitchen appliance knows just how complicated and frustrating some products can be. Paper instruction manuals are often hard to follow and getting two or more devices or components to work together can be a nightmare. But what if the products themselves could tell users and each other what to do?

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want to understand mobile gaming, from the commercial side of game development to the current trends in game design, Sandy Duncan is a great person to talk to.

He spent over 16 years at Microsoft, initially working with PC manufacturers and latterly setting up the company’s Xbox game console business in Europe. He’s an enthusiastic gamer. And, for the last six years, he’s been CEO of YoYo Games.

I started my conversation with Sandy by asking him why there was so much interest in mobile gaming when PCs and dedicated consoles were always going to be more powerful than smartphones.

Mark Bridge writes:

Oooh, a new phone. It’s running a powerful new processor, it has a large edge-to-edge toughened glass display and its model name bears the familiar ‘i’ suffix. Hang on a moment. Suffix?  Yes, suffix. This isn’t a new Apple device but Motorola Mobility’s first Intel-powered Android smartphone, the RAZR i.

James Rosewell writes:

The last time I used a Microsoft based mobile phone was 2008 in the form of the HTC Hermes. Since then Apple and Android have dominated my mobile life. It was therefore with more than a little trepidation that I switched over to Windows Phone 7.5 in the form of the Lumia 800 in July this year. Since then I’m continually being asked what I think of the phone and the operating system. Here are my experiences and thoughts.

Mark Bridge writes:

I wasn’t supposed to be at this year’s AMEE 2012 conference in Lyon. AMEE is the Association for Medical Education in Europe, which - as you can probably guess - has very little direct connection with the mobile phone industry. However, my wife was going because she works in medical education. Me?  I fancied a trip to France.

Time for another podcast presented by Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge. They begin this week's programme by talking about the latest enterprise-friendly developments from BlackBerry.

Next comes a new survey from Ofcom about the UK's 4G data speeds, followed by news about TalkTalk's MVNO deal with Telefonica, the growth of WiFi in the home and a report from AVG about social media sapping smartphone performance.

This week's podcast starts with Lenovo's purchase of the Motorola Mobility smartphone business. Was it a good deal for everyone?

We also talk about network infrastructure sharing in the UK, mobile malware, 3G coverage, misleading apps, mobile advertising, Samsung's retail plans and global tablet sales.

The past few days have been a good time for launches. Twitter has floated on the stock exchange, Kazam has revealed its smartphone range and EE has created a tariff with a million gigabytes of mobile data.

On the other side of the coin, Acer's CEO is quitting, Vodafone UK has missed its 3G coverage target and hackers can take control of your handset's camera to ascertain PIN codes.

There's plenty of talk about mobile networks in this week's podcast. We start with a new charity-focussed MVNO before moving on to Ofcom's plans for avoiding a mobile capacity crunch.

There's also talk about WiFi offloading, BlackBerry's free voice calling service, Nokia's map business and much more as well.

Iain, James and Mark discuss the week's mobile industry headlines... starting with HP and webOS, then mentioning Samsung, Panasonic, Ofcom, Jawbone, Everything Everywhere, RIM and Google, before ending with a new retail scheme from O2.