HTC says it’s appointed Benjamin Ho as its new Chief Marketing Officer. He’ll join the company in January and will replace John Wang, the current CMO.

It’s also changing the role of Jason Mackenzie, currently president of global sales and marketing, who will now be focussed on HTC’s global sales strategy.

This week's podcast starts with news that HP is unhappy - but we resist the temptation to include any saucy puns that might spice up the story.

The programme also covers Nokia's new Facebook-friendly phone, plans for white space technology in the UK, shopping on smartphones, Samsung's Chinese suppliers, the demand for mobile data and a new app from Orange that seems to threaten its mobile business.

Drivers who buy certain Chevrolet cars in the USA next year will be able to use Apple’s Siri voice-controlled assistant to activate vehicle features when driving.

The option will be available on Chevrolet Spark and Sonic models that include the Chevrolet MyLink infotainment system.

The M-Pesa mobile payment and money transfer service, which was launched five years ago in Kenya by the Safaricom network, has been joined by a savings and loan facility called M-Shwari.

The new facility has been set up by Vodafone, Safaricom and the Commercial Bank of Africa.

A new report by IMS Research forecasts that the number of mobile machine-to-machine (M2M) connections worldwide will treble in five years, from around 107 million connections in 2011 to 326 million connections by 2016.

It says this growth is being driven by a number of factors, including government regulation, a desire for increased efficiency, declining costs and the availability of services that make it easier to develop M2M applications.