Say what you like about the Apple iPhone 5, it’s certainly a popular phone.

Apple has just announced the new iPhone 5 has sold over five million units within the first three days of launch. In addition, more than 100 million existing iOS devices - iPhones, iPads and iPods - have been updated with the company’s new iOS 6 mobile operating system.

Apple has been named as the UK’s coolest brand, according to the 2012 CoolBrands survey. The annual survey combines votes from an independent ‘expert council’ with the opinions of around 3,000 members of the public.

Approximately 1,250 brands were shortlisted for the survey, which considers factors including style, innovation, originality, authenticity, desirability and uniqueness.

A new study suggests that online impulse purchases in the UK may have increased by £1.1 billion a year as a result of the shopping convenience offered by smartphones and tablet computers.

The figures from Rackspace Hosting indicate that 48% of UK adults who use smartphones or tablets for online shopping admit they’re buying things on impulse more frequently by using their handheld devices, resulting in an average £329 extra spent per person per year.

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want to understand mobile gaming, from the commercial side of game development to the current trends in game design, Sandy Duncan is a great person to talk to.

He spent over 16 years at Microsoft, initially working with PC manufacturers and latterly setting up the company’s Xbox game console business in Europe. He’s an enthusiastic gamer. And, for the last six years, he’s been CEO of YoYo Games.

I started my conversation with Sandy by asking him why there was so much interest in mobile gaming when PCs and dedicated consoles were always going to be more powerful than smartphones.

Mark Bridge writes:

Oooh, a new phone. It’s running a powerful new processor, it has a large edge-to-edge toughened glass display and its model name bears the familiar ‘i’ suffix. Hang on a moment. Suffix?  Yes, suffix. This isn’t a new Apple device but Motorola Mobility’s first Intel-powered Android smartphone, the RAZR i.