Mark Bridge writes:

As 2011 draws to a close, many of us start looking towards 2012 and wondering what’ll be happening in the mobile phone industry. Here at The Fonecast we’ve invited a handful of industry experts and business leaders to offer us their thoughts about the coming year.

Today’s podcast contains analysis and insight from Hans Eriksson, Steve Litchfield, Dr Windsor Holden, Dr Mark Smith and Jack Wraith MBE.

We've brought together a handful of experts and business leaders to discover what they think will happen in the mobile telecom industry next year. Listen to predictions for 2012 from Hans Eriksson, Steve Litchfield, Mark Smith, Windsor Holden and Jack Wraith.

Mark Bridge writes:

In this week's podcast feature we're joined by Jack Wraith, chief executive for the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum and chairman of the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum.

He talks to Iain Graham about the current state of voicemail security and the improvements to mobile security we've seen in the last few years.

As 'voicemail hacking' news stories continue, Iain Graham talks to mobile industry crime-fighter Jack Wraith. Jack discusses mobile phone security from his position as head of the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum and the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum.

If there was one thing that mobile security expert Jack Wraith could say to every new mobile phone owner, it would be "go and register the phone on immobilise.com". That's the UK's national property register, which is linked to the Police national mobile property database.

Jack is our guest in this week's podcast. As the man who heads the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum and the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum he's well-placed to offer an informed opinion.

Amir Lehr of Cellebrite writes:

Mobile phone faults pose a daily problem for mobile phone retailers. According to mobile diagnostics expert Cellebrite, 60 per cent of cases are software-related issues with the smartphone, and can be resolved within minutes.

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week a major retailer with a significant online presence announced plans to release its own-brand smartphone by the end of the year. No, not Amazon. This news came from Tesco.

Lawrence Lundy of Frost & Sullivan writes:

While the Galaxy S5 is an evolutionary product, there is not enough in there to make people upgrade from the 4. It doesn't push the envelope in any real way; we are in a sort of stasis now when it comes to smartphone innovation.

Jürgen Hase of Deutsche Telekom writes:

The Smart City is on its way. All over the world more and more cities are connecting all areas of their infrastructure. Pisa in Tuscany, for example, aims to improve its traffic management with a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution and a Big Data service provided by Deutsche Telekom.

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hey, everybody, we’re releasing a new flagship smartphone that carries all the hopes of the company with it. If this sells well, we could be saved. If not, it could be disaster.”

“Great. What shall we call our new phone?”

“Oh, we’ll give it the same name as the previous model. That’ll be fine.”

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.