A report on MobileEurope.co.uk says mass market NFC-based mobile payments are expected to hit London in time for the 2012 Olympics. Pablo Montesano, Telefonica’s Director of Mobile Financial Services, is quoted as saying "I expect there to be a lot of activity in this space in London before the Olympics, with a significant push from several players. The reality is no-one knows when this will take off, but we are moving closer than ever to the tipping point."

A report in French newspaper Le Figaro (reported by MobileBusinessBriefing.com) says Stephane Richard, the CEO of France Telecom, wants to meet the heads of Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone on 8th October to talk about creating a common OS for mobile devices.

Research In Motion has published its second quarter results for the three months ended 28th August 28 2010. It says revenue grew 31% year-on-year to $4.62 billion, its subscriber account base grew by approximately 56% to over 50 million (although it had hoped for more) and BlackBerry smartphone shipments grew more than 45% over the same quarter last year to 12.1 million.

The latest forecast from Informa Telecoms & Media suggests that Android will overtake Symbian as the world's most popular smartphone operating system in around four years – with sales of new Android devices outnumbering Symbian smartphones in 2012.

Yesterday, technology news website TechCrunch reported rumours that Facebook was 'building' a mobile phone by creating the software and working with a third party for the hardware. It noted that Facebook wanted to integrate itself into the contacts list and other core functions. A possible partnership with INQ was suggested, which would follow in the footsteps of the INQ1 handset.