UK communication regulator Ofcom has announced that all the UK’s major mobile phone networks are now covering 90% of UK homes with 3G service.

All were required to cover 90% of the UK population with 3G service by 30th June 2013. However, calculations published by Ofcom in November showed that Vodafone had only reached 88.66% coverage.

Mark Bridge writes:

There was great news for some BlackBerry owners this week. The new 10.2.1 update to the BlackBerry 10 OS was released, offering a new incoming call screen, SMS and email groups, more options for locking and unlocking, extra battery usage information, enterprise features and - for customers with a BlackBerry Z30, BlackBerry Q10 or BlackBerry Q5 smartphone - an FM radio.

76.9 million tablets were shipped around the world in the last three months of of 2013, according to figures from the International Data Corporation (IDC). That’s 62.4% up from the previous quarter and a year-on-year increase of 28.2%, although a much lower growth rate than the same quarter in 2012.

Total tablet shipments for 2013 reached 217.1 million units; up 50.6% from the previous year.

The UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published a set of principles that clarify its position on the legal obligations of the online and app-based games industry.

It follows last year’s investigation into gaming industry practices that were potentially misleading or broke consumer protection laws in other ways.

A new report from Alcatel-Lucent suggests that more than 11.6 million mobile devices are infected with malware. It’s based on figures from Alcatel-Lucent’s Kindsight subsidiary, which is able to measure the impact of network traffic.

Mobile malware infections were said to be up by 20% in 2013, with 4G LTE devices the most likely to be infected.