Berg Insight forecasts that the total number of cellular (mobile) machine-to-machine connections in the global retail industry will grow from 18.4 million last year to reach 33.3 million connections in 2018. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 12.6%.

Cellular M2M connections are used on a range of retail devices including Point-of-Sale terminals, ATMs and ticket machines, avoiding the need for a fixed-line data connection.

The GSMA has become a member of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), which is committed to reducing the cost of internet access in developing countries.

It means the mobile network trade association will work with A4AI to identify and address policy and regulatory barriers to internet access.

0.1% of the world’s 4G users consumed more than half of all LTE downlink data in 2013, according to a new report. That makes these ‘extreme’ 4G users 10 times more data hungry than 3G customers, where 1% of users consume half of all 3G downlink data.

The figures come from the JDSU Location Intelligence Business Unit, which was known as Arieso until its acquisition last year.

Natasha Cooper writes:

As someone who has been through more iPhone screens than I’d like to remember, when I recently upgraded to an iPhone 5s I was keen to keep it in one piece - for a few months at least. Cue the new CAT Active Urban Phone Case, which claims to protect your phones from falls of up to 1.8 meters using a reinforced material that can also be found in protective equipment for motor bike riders.

Mobile payment provider iZettle has released its first software development kit for developers. It follows the release of iZettle’s API in 2012.

The free iOS SDK makes it easier for developers to add payment services to their mobile applications in any of the nine countries where iZettle operates.