This year, the revenue from mobile application testing tools will exceed $200 million (£125 million), according to a new report from ABI Research. About three-quarters of this comes from tools that enhance manual testing.

However, automated testing is expected to drive growth over the next few years, with app testing revenue approaching $800 million by the end of 2017.

A new research report from Berg Insight expects the number of mobile money users in emerging markets to grow from 61 million active users in 2011 to 381 million by 2017; a compound annual growth rate of 36%.

Meanwhile the total value of mobile money transactions is forecast to grow from $44 billion last year to $395 billion (£246 billion) in 2017, the equivalent of a 44% increase each year.

Ofcom has announced plans for a consultation on how to protect consumers from price rises that happen within fixed-term contracts for landline, broadband and mobile phone services.

Current rules insist that communications providers give their customers at least one month’s notice of any significantly detrimental change to their contractual terms.

The GSMA, the trade organisation that represents more than a thousand companies in the mobile industry, has published new research that shows the industry still has plenty of growth potential.

Total mobile connections worldwide are expected to reach 6.8 billion by the fourth quarter of this year. When machine-to machine communications and inactive SIM cards are excluded, the figure is 5.9 billion connections.

Google published its quarterly results yesterday, revealing a drop in quarterly profits. There was also embarrassment when a draft version of the results was published early.

Third quarter revenue was up year-on-year to $14.1 billion although net income fell by around 20% to $2.18 billion from the previous year’s figure. UK revenue was $1.2 billion.