Kevin Deal, Vice President of Aerospace & Defence at IFS North America, writes:

It is difficult to believe that the idea of a hand-held mobile phone was an alien concept only a few short decades ago. From brick-sized analogue devices to wafer thin smartphones with processing capabilities comparable to those of laptops, new technology is constantly pushing the boundaries of what we can expect from our phones. And, in a reverse of the normal pattern of technology innovation, a development driven by consumers is set to have an important impact on aerospace and defence (A&D).

Figures from mobile security company AdaptiveMobile suggest that 148.43 million spam texts are received by British consumers every month, with 14.2 million people being bothered by SMS spam at least once a week.

The study, which was carried out last month by YouGov, found that consumers rated unwanted text messages as the most annoying form of spam (41%) ahead of email (36%) and direct mail through the letterbox (17%).

ABI Research says 2013 will see NFC leaving its ‘trial phase’, with 285 million NFC-enabled devices expected to be shipped worldwide.

That figure will have increased almost seven-fold by 2017, when a total of 1.95 billion NFC devices are forecast to be shipped.

It looks as though Samsung’s lawyers will be allowed to see full details of the recent Apple/HTC patent licensing agreement including the licence fees, although they won’t be permitted to pass this information to Samsung’s management.

Research by intellectual property analyst Florian Mueller recently revealed details of the agreement.

The new Ericsson Mobility Report (previously called the Ericsson Traffic and Market Report) says around 40% of all mobile phones sold worldwide in the past quarter were smartphones.

Recent reports from ABI Research and IDC reached similar conclusions.