Mark Bridge writes:

Patents were a very popular topic of conversation last week. Google sold its Motorola Mobility smartphone business to Lenovo but hung on to most of the patents. Does this mean the patents were the most valuable part of the business? Well, when you look at the difference between the original purchase price and the sale price, it seems a reasonable conclusion.

Inq Mobile, a Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary that launched in 2007 as a mobile phone manufacturer and produced one of the first so-called ‘Facebook phones’ before changing its focus to mobile software, has closed down.

Last year it produced a personalised magazine application called Material and a ‘social homescreen’ app called SO.HO.

The UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published a set of principles that clarify its position on the legal obligations of the online and app-based games industry.

It follows last year’s investigation into gaming industry practices that were potentially misleading or broke consumer protection laws in other ways.

Robin Kent writes:

After initially suffering from slow pick up by consumers, 4G has begun to accelerate, and is now well on the way to the forecasted one billion subscribers by 2017. In fact EE, owner of T-Mobile and Orange, recently announced the addition of 493,000 new 4G customers to its existing base of 1.2 million.

Mobile payment provider iZettle has released its first software development kit for developers. It follows the release of iZettle’s API in 2012.

The free iOS SDK makes it easier for developers to add payment services to their mobile applications in any of the nine countries where iZettle operates.