In this week's podcast we’re talking about smartphone sales from Nokia and Apple, redundancies at RIM, the closure of Google Labs, gesture recognition technology, customer service research and the growth (or not) of mobile payments.

You can download the show from iTunes or listen to the podcast by using the audio player on our website. There's an RSS feed for the MP3 version of the podcast as well.

This week we start with contrasting quarterly results from Apple and Nokia before talking about Google Labs, a new London taxi app, gesture recognition technology, mobile payments and some customer service research.

Allot Communications, a company that specialises in bandwidth management for fixed and mobile broadband service providers, has published its Allot MobileTrends Report for the first half of 2011.

It shows that mobile data bandwidth usage (based on data from its mobile operator customers) has grown by 77% during H1 2011.

The latest version of the Windows Phone operating system - codenamed Mango - has officially been released to handset manufacturers and Microsoft's mobile operator partners.

Current Windows Phone handsets will be able to upgrade to the Mango update from the autumn.

The Communications Consumer Panel, an independent group of experts established to provide advice to Ofcom, have asked the regulator to use the forthcoming UK 4G spectrum auction as an opportunity to increase mobile coverage.

It's proposing that coverage obligations are set at national or regional levels across the UK. Alternatively, it would like to see money from the spectrum auction used to pay operators who'd then provide cross-network roaming for these areas.