A new research report from Berg Insight has calculated that worldwide shipments of smartphones increased 74% last year to 295 million units. The number of smartphone users increased by 38% year-on-year to an estimated 470 million people.

Shipment volumes are expected to continue increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 32.4%, reaching 1.2 billion units in 2015.

A number of blogs on the World of Difference programme - a charity-focussed initiative from The Vodafone Foundation - were taken over today by protesters from the UK Uncut action group. UK Uncut claims Vodafone has taken advantage of what it describes as "a £6 billion tax dodge".

The site has since been restored.

This year, 49.6% of all in-car navigation device sales are expected to be smartphone solutions. That’s up from 40.6% in 2010 and 23.4% in 2009, according to IHS iSuppli research.

2012 will see unit sales for smartphone navigation take more than 50% of the automotive navigation market.

Telefónica O2 UK has signed its first 'smart metering' agreement, a multi-million pound three-year contract with G4S Utility Services.

O2 will provide around 200,000 SIM cards and other machine-to-machine technology to connect smart meters to the G4S data centre. Information will be sent via text message to and from G4S.

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that one in eight mobile phone users worldwide will either have a 'mobile ticket' delivered to their phone or will buy a ticket using their phone by 2015. That's over 750 million users, compared with 230 million people today.

The next two years are expected to see mobile ticketing become mainstream, with mobile barcode boarding passes and cinema tickets leading the way.