Mark Bridge writes:

It’s always a relief when April Fool’s Day doesn’t fall on a work day, isn’t it?  Still, that didn’t stop the jokes. Even though the mobile industry traditionally tends to head to the pub for a roast dinner and a pint on Sunday, there was many a prank in the morning of April 1st.

Our friends at 51Degrees.mobi revealed left-handed device detection, Google prepared to run mobile ads on phones with dials, Phones 4U introduced Gnomes 4U femtocells, Nokia made a Windows Phone device out of ice… and so on.

Mark Bridge writes:

There are times I feel like turning my back on the mobile phone industry and joining a monastery. That’s probably not going to happen, given the monks’ tradition of not admitting wives. But yesterday was another of those frustrating occasions. Let me tell you why.

Research In Motion, the company behind BlackBerry mobile devices, has reported its fourth quarter results for the financial year that ended on 3rd March 2012.

During the quarter, it shipped approximately 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones and over 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

Mobile developers attending the BlackBerry 10 Jam conference in May will be the first to see RIM’s new development tools for its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system.

In addition, developer attendees will receive the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha - a prototype smartphone running a modified version of the PlayBook OS.

California’s Attorney General has announced an agreement that commits Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft and Research In Motion to improving privacy protection for consumers who use internet-connected applications on their smartphones.

The six companies have agreed to ensure the apps available on their platforms have a formal privacy policy.