Mark Bridge writes:

Another year, another Mobile World Congress!

It’s something of a cliché to talk about the months flying by, how it seems like yesterday when everyone in Barcelona had a Nokia handset and the dancers on the CBOSS stand were all wearing full-length evening dresses. Yet it’s also true. Except for that part about the dancers, anyway.

Here at TheFonecast.com we’ve had a busy 12 months that have seen us talking to more and more people, gaining a much larger audience and watching the mobile industry grow dramatically.

Entry submissions for the 18th annual Mobile News Awards are now well advanced, with the closing date less than a month away on 8th February.

There are 19 categories in this year’s awards, including Best Manufacturer, Best MVNO, Innovative Handset, Innovative Product, Innovative Service, B2B Dealer and Business Solution.

Intel Corporation has announced two new mobile-related deals for its Intel Atom processor. There’ll be a new handset from Lenovo and what’s described as “a multi-year, multi-device strategic relationship” with Motorola Mobility.

The company says several smartphones based on the new Atom processor are expected to be released in 2012, with the Motorola deal also including the possibility of tablets.

Mobile music discovery service Shazam has launched its own music player for iOS devices.

The Shazam Player, which is available on the Apple App Store, enables customers to browse through their music library and add more tracks via iTunes. It’ll also play YouTube videos and includes social networking options along with Shazam’s LyricPlay ‘streaming lyrics’ feature.

In today’s podcast we’re talking about Netflix arriving in the UK, Yahoo! picking its new CEO from PayPal, China Telecom setting up an MVNO, data usage growing and mobile payments taking yet another step forward.

You can listen to this week’s edition of The Fonecast on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.