Facebook has announced its latest quarterly earnings figures and has also revealed details of the social network’s mobile-based users.

The number of monthly active users (MAUs) was up 15% year-on-year to 1.28 billion, with mobile MAUs up 34% to 1.01 billion.

We begin this week's podcast with a discussion about the Heartbleed bug, the effect it's having on the mobile industry and the wider issues for all internet users.

We're also talking about the future of BlackBerry, UK 4G coverage, new CEOs, Bluetooth connectivity, privacy concerns and the next generation of mobile processors.

Facebook and WhatsApp have received a letter from the US Federal Trade Commission reminding them about user privacy.

In February, Facebook announced that it was planning to acquire messaging service WhatsApp in a deal worth $16 billion (£9.6 billion).

Messaging was very much on the agenda at Mobile World Congress this year, following Facebook's announcement that it was planning to acquire WhatsApp in a 19 billion dollar deal. So if the future for this type of internet-based 'over the top' messaging service looks good, what does this mean for SMS?

To find out more, we spoke to Stacy Adams of mBlox to learn what was happening in the messaging world, to find out how SMS is being integrated with mobile apps - and to discover some of the other ways SMS was being used by businesses today.

This week's programme begins with some of the biggest news stories that came out of Mobile World Congress.

Iain, James and Mark then move on to the other headlines from the past few days, including Boeing's secret agent smartphone, Apple's plans for mobile in-car entertainment, a new structure for Telefonica and new technology for mobile payments.

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks have changed, haven’t they?

Once they were all about delivering service. Coverage. Quality. Price. Now it’s much more about branding.

Everything Everywhere has announced it’s to become EE, an obvious abbreviation that’s been used in mobile industry briefings pretty much since the company was created two years ago. It joins the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hennes & Mauritz, British Home Stores, Independent Television and Marks & Spencer, although all of these took decades to transition into businesses that were just described by their initials.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s a smartphone autumn, as prophesied a few weeks ago by the Carphone Warehouse and many others. The frenzy of big-name announcements led by Samsung at Berlin’s IFA has given way to stand-alone media presentations from Nokia, Motorola and Amazon.

Ted Landphair of voanews.com writes:

A lot of people gave up carrying much cash a long time ago, since they knew ‘plastic’ - a credit or debit card, or a store or public transit ‘smart card’ - would be accepted just about everywhere.

But to hear tech companies tell it, plastic cards will be museum pieces as well before long.

Mark Bridge writes:

It was a week of dramatic contrasts in the mobile phone industry. We started with Everything Everywhere’s news that 4G service was coming to the UK this year – possibly with a new brand that’ll work alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Meanwhile Three UK seems to have its own plans that involve acquiring some excess 4G spectrum from Everything Everywhere. There was much muttering from Vodafone and O2, although whether this’ll manifest itself as legal action remains to be seen.

Robin Kent writes:

With this week’s announcement that Everything Everywhere has been given the green light to launch the UK’s first 4G service, competing operators such as Vodafone and O2 are getting hot under the collar. With every day that goes by, these operators lose vital competitiveness as the market creeps away them towards Orange and T-Mobile. This is a real life ‘hare and tortoise’ scenario.

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.